California's 'Repugnant' Restrictions on Public Gun Possession Just Took Effect
After a federal judge deemed the state's location-specific gun bans unconstitutional, the 9th Circuit stayed his injunction.
California's sweeping new restrictions on public possession of firearms, many of which a federal judge enjoined this month after deeming them "repugnant to the Second Amendment," took effect today thanks to a stay that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued on Saturday. That means Californians with permits that notionally allow them to carry concealed handguns will have to think twice before using them, because the state has declared a long list of locations they routinely visit to be "sensitive places" where firearms are prohibited.
Senate Bill 2, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law on September 26, makes it a crime for permit holders to carry their handguns in 26 categories of places, including parks, playgrounds, zoos, libraries, museums, banks, hospitals, places of worship, public transportation, stadiums, athletic facilities, casinos, bars, and restaurants that serve alcohol. The list also covers any "privately owned commercial establishment that is open to the public" unless the owner "clearly and conspicuously posts a sign at the entrance" saying guns are allowed.
S.B. 2 "turns nearly every public place in California into a 'sensitive place,' effectively abolishing the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding and exceptionally qualified citizens to be armed and to defend themselves in public," U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney noted on December 20, when he issued a preliminary injunction that barred the state from enforcing 15 provisions of the law. "California will not allow concealed carry permitholders to effectively practice what the Second Amendment promises. SB2's coverage is sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court."
Carney was referring to the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which upheld the right to carry guns in public for self-defense. Under Bruen, states may no longer demand that residents demonstrate a "special need" before they are allowed to exercise that right. Accordingly, S.B. 2 eliminates California's "good cause" requirement for carry permits, along with a similarly amorphous "good character" criterion. By limiting the discretion of licensing authorities, the bill notes, those changes could have opened the door to "broadly allowing individuals to carry firearms in most public areas." Deeming that outcome intolerable, legislators instead decreed that guns may not be carried in most public areas.
Several other states, including New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Hawaii, have attempted the same end run around Bruen, making carry permits easier to obtain but much harder to use. Their location-specific gun bans provoked lawsuits that resulted in adverse rulings by federal judges. But those warnings did not deter California legislators, who are hoping that the 9th Circuit, which historically has been very friendly to gun control, will bless their transparent trickery. Although the appeals court has not yet addressed the merits of the case, its stay in May v. Bonta allows enforcement of the new restrictions instead of maintaining the status quo.
The lead plaintiff, Sonoma County resident Reno May, explains what that means in a declaration he submitted as part of the lawsuit, which was filed by several carry permit holders and gun rights groups. "Prior to SB 2, I only didn't carry my pistol when planning on going to one of the few places where carry was not permitted, such as a school or courthouse, or when I intended to have a drink with dinner," he writes. "Because SB 2 will prohibit me from carrying in many places where I am accustomed to concealed carrying a firearm, the utility of my CCW permit, and thus my right to be armed for self-defense in public, will be outright eliminated in nearly all common contexts."
May can no longer legally bring his gun to most of the restaurants he patronizes, because they have liquor licenses; it does not matter whether he plans to drink. His permit also is no good on BART trains, at the bank, at the gym (an "athletic facility"), at urgent care clinics, or at the Santa Rosa mall May often visits, which includes a fitness center as well as restaurants that serve alcohol. Even stopping for gas is legally fraught, since "most gas stations sell lottery tickets," making them "sensitive" as locations "used for gambling."
The default rule against guns in businesses open to the public poses further problems. "There are many local businesses that I frequent that will likely not post [the legally required] signs, forcing me to either not carry there or stop patronizing them," May says. "Even the ones that are willing to post such signs may be off limits for other reasons." His local gun dealer, for instance, "shares a parking lot with several other businesses, including an establishment that serves alcohol." So even if the gun shop posts a sign welcoming armed permit holders, May cannot bring his gun into the store without breaking the law while crossing the parking lot.
In addition to noting the breadth of California's gun-free zones, Carney emphasized that state-vetted carry permit holders are "overwhelmingly law-abiding and responsible." They have to undergo training and extensive screening, and they are rarely implicated in violent crime. They "are not the gun wielders legislators should fear," Carney wrote, since they "are not responsible for any of the mass shootings or horrific gun violence that has occurred in California."
Under Bruen, the state has the burden of showing that its restrictions are "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." Again and again, Carney found that California had failed to meet that test. In some cases, its arguments were so broad that they could justify a blanket ban on public possession of guns.
Defending the ban on guns in banks, for example, the state likened them to schools. California "contends that banks are like schools because they 'are frequented by vulnerable populations such as the elderly,'" Carney notes. "But nonvulnerable populations are just as likely to visit banks as vulnerable populations. Accepting a comparison between schools and banks in this context would condone eviscerating law-abiding citizens' Second Amendment right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense altogether." And that, of course, is the whole idea.
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Hello, SCOTUS.
Openly violating 2A looks a lot like an insurrection.
That depends on the context.
Yup. Check your skin color, and whether your position would be supported by Trump or not.
Anytime the democrats mention ‘a threat to democracy,’ they are projecting what they actually think or are doing! This people, is what an insurrection actually looks like. You are rebelling against the Constitution!
Very true. We need a kangaroo court formed to look into this. Hey, they’re guilty. No one in public office in California can now run for federal office.
If it’s an insurrection against a specific Jew, then it’s ok.
CA is a state where 30-40% of voters would be happy to author the new amendment to repeal 2A, and where another 30-40% can’t afford to buy guns legally anyway (rumor has it, black market prices in the state are 40-50% lower than legal retail with the compliance burden of both State and Federal laws).
Not to mention that legal gun owners may well have been largely over-represented among the millions of residents who’ve fled the state since Gavin Newsom took office as Governor.
Will this end all of the gang violence in the inner city?
Undoubtedly. In fact, with all the gun control California already had, it’s truly a wonder that they had any problems at all.
I’m not sure whether restrictive laws like this fall into the “eggs broken to make an important omelet” category, or perhaps the “where do these peons get off thinking they can protect themselves category”. Overall, this is probably the the safest and sanest way to control the bloodlust of those would carry and fancy the chance to use lethal weapons.
Laws like this must pass strict scrutiny, i.e., the government imposing these restrictions must be able to demonstrate that (1) an important state interest is involved, and (2) the law addresses this important state interest in a way that is least intrusive to public or individual liberty. I believe the California law satisfies this and thus survives the strict scrutiny test.
It is an important state interest that people obey the laws and the “rules and regulations” imposed by state bodies, agencies and actors. Armed citizens, especially those with a firearm readily at hand, can be much more difficult to “corral”, and an entire population “going heeled” much more likely to “buck against the reins”. Hence, in the interest of the general welfare, they should be allowed to be in possession of lethal weapons only in very limited geographical areas.
In addition, equity requires the redistribution of material wealth and the goods of others to those who have not won “life’s lottery”. Such redistribution can take many forms, but is best and most quickly accomplished through riot, smash & grab robbery, and to a lesser degree, individual acts of extortion. Having a population of the selfish and xenophobic with ready access to firearms poses a literal, physical threat to the life of redistributionists (as the intended victim my use such a weapon to deter redistributionist behavior or even injure or kill those who would do the redistributing), and this applies whether in large group settings (riots), smaller group participation (smash & grab robberies) and even on the individual level as the unfortunate and dispossessed (citizen and alien alike) lobby other individuals on a private level for duly owed reparations payments (panhandling and strong-arm robbery). As such, the restrictions on gun carriage can truly be seen to be inhibitory to the exercise of the civil rights of those who, whether in large groups, medium-sized assemblies, or as individuals petition other entities or individuals who have unfairly attained and selfishly seek to hoard their ill-gotten gains, thus allowing “the poor and downtrodden” to improve their own material welfare. Such inhibition of the civil right of petition is clearly not allowed by the constitution.
Therefore, since confiscation of weapons at least temporarily, is prohibited by the Constitution, that same Constitution and court precedents effectuating it clearly allow for certain restrictions to be placed on the use and carry of lethal weapons to preserve the people’s right to petition government, entities, and individual to forego resistance to redistribution of material goods for the welfare of the masses. California does not at present seek to limit the availability, carriage, and ultimately the use of nerf balls, whiffle bats, sponges, or wads of dryer lint against those who do exercise their right to “petition” the unworthy wealthy.
It’s entirely possible that a large portion of the CA legislature thinks that the level of concern with legal compliance among street gang members and CCW holders is roughly equivalent.
At some level, they probably also fear the possibility of a wave of news stories about permitted carriers intervening in and preventing crimes; especially with the DAs in LA and SF essentially preventing the police from doing so in many situations. One of the anchor points of their take on reality is that the “good guy with a gun” scenario doesn’t exist (more recently for many of them, that conception might actually include LEOs).
Keep throwing shit against the wall until something sticks…
Sort of like having first amendment rights to write an article, but it can’t be published where someone might read it?
You can write anything you want. In the dark, and as long as you burn it before turning the light on, and as long as you use fire that doesn’t emit any light.
Or carbon.
Different law, but of course.
Does this mean California will never have another mass shooting? They are banned everywhere mass shootings take place, so assume it is impossible for them to take place now. Right? That is how it works, right?
Yes. Dear Leader Newsom has already declared mass shootings and mass shoplifting illegal. They don’t happen. If a non-party member (or your eyes) tell you they do, they are lying. Dear Leader Newsom is infallible. He is truth and light.
I think the motivation at this point might be to get the last holdouts who believe in the Bill of Rights as written. They probably don’t realize that a significant chunk of their actual constituencies went out and bought their first guns in 2020 as a reaction to the Covid lockdowns.
Of course, if you’re good at keeping whatever you’re carrying concealed, and don’t try to pass through places with active security at the doors, any half-baked nonsense to originate from Sacramento won’t mean a whole lot is the cities where the cops are under orders to do no enforcement of a huge slate of laws. Looking at the text of the law, it seems like violating most of the restrictions are considered at most a misdemeanor, unless the person involved has a previous felony conviction (in which case, they’re already pretty much prohibited from owning/carrying a gun in CA anyway); if it’s a misdemeanor then it might as well not exist in L.A. County unless Gascon has rolled back his policy announced on day one as DA that his office wouldn’t prosecute any misdemeanor as long as he’s in charge.
Hopefully this holiday season, Newsome will learn the true meaning of the Second Amendment.
Does the second amendment apply to woodchippers? It’s not so much a weapon as a means of disposal, after all.
-jcr
It has to be electric, gas powered woodchippers are not allowed.
Once again the left reveals it’s open contempt for what used to be considered the rule of law. State actors have disagreed with SCOTUS throughout the history of the Republic but in the end most people believed that it was the final arbiter of law. The constitution does not provide the court with a mechanism to enforce it’s decrees and if the executive is unwilling to act leftists feel free to defy it. I personally believe that the court has done more damage than good in it’s history. But it is an equal branch in our constitutional system and for better or worse the final authority on constitutional questions. Without a rule of law we are left with the rule of men which is exactly what the founders were trying to end.
Dude, don’t you even living constitution? In the woke 21st century, any nasty old document scratched out by a bunch of white slavers is much less important that a desire to rule supported by needy, fragile people who feel really, really hard.
The 9th’s rep is well-earned.
The Nutty Ninth strikes again.
How are they not impeached? Their rulings are regularly shot down by the SC and yet they repeatedly defy explicit rulings to rule as they wish. I just don’t understand how they are permitted to continue operating when their failures to adhere to their purpose are so blatant
They are not impeached for the following reasons:
District of Alaska
District of Arizona
Central District of California
Eastern District of California
Northern District of California
Southern District of California
District of Hawaii
District of Idaho
District of Montana
District of Nevada
District of Oregon
Eastern District of Washington
Western District of Washington
It takes a supermajority vote in the Senate to convict when somebody is impeached, and there are enough Democrats who like gun control, and hate the 2nd amendment, that it’s impossible to successfully impeach a judge for upholding unconstitutional gun laws.
The Ninth Circus.
Somebody needs to take Newsom hunting.
“In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify, disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. Constitutional rights were suspended,”
“During the five years of repression that followed, society was ‘cleansed’ by the National Socialist regime.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/12/how-nazis-used-gun-control-stephen-p-halbrook/
What did anyone think was going to happen by idolizing the Nazi ideology? Did they seriously think it’d somehow turn-out completely “different this time”?
Stupid people who’s own greed and selfishness (gov-‘guns’ STEAL for us) end up tearing entire nations to it’s knees and killing millions. And it just keeps happening over and over and over again. Criminals (who think gov-‘guns’ make stuff) belong in JAIL to protect a civil society. They don’t belong in politics.
Democrats absolutely LOVE ‘guns’. They build up [WE] gangsters of the ‘monopoly of gun-force’ (gov) and pretend their golden gangster-guns can stop COVID, change the weather, and make sh*t for them and that the only thing stopping their progressive/aggressive guns is your defensive gun.
It’s important to keep your head out of the Nazi-clouds. ‘Guns’ don’t actually make stuff!! Realize it. Acknowledge it…. Stop being stupid.
We all know this will be tossed by the SCOTUS – why then are libtards pursuing this?
It’s called pandering.
This is why you never want just one party to have full control of a legislature and executive office. All the rhetoric they preach to their base and ostensibly believe, can normally be brushed off as “We didn’t pass it because the other party hates democracy and won’t let us” when it’s too whackadoodle. But if they have a supermajority suddenly the crazy shit that only the most vocal voters wanted makes it through. There’s no Other to stop it, and incumbents have to vote for it else they won’t be reelected — either because they are painted as going back on campaign promises, or because the party apparatus turns against them since they didn’t play ball.
This is how you get wildly unpopular shit like Obamacare passed, as well as every fucking thing that ever happens in California that’s popular only in San Francisco and reviled by the rest of us.
The very curse in the indoctrination that the USA is but a Nazi-democracy instead of a Constitutional Union of Constitutional States.
Dont forget the gay race commies in LA. They love all this shit.
Wedge issue for the 2024 elections.
Here’s the ad: “If President Biden is reelected, he will appoint Supreme Court Justices who understand that the 2nd Amendment applies only to the National Guard.”
Since the National Guard is part of the US Army, NOT a militia, it is actually what the 2nd amendment applies against.
But the Liberals always say that the National Guard is the Militia, and so are the folks the 2nd Amendment addresses. Remember, these are the folks who think AR-15s are automatic rifles more deadly than an elephant gun.
Ignorant libs love creating ‘kill zones’ where the unarmed are 100% open to death by criminal
Which will happen and provide more grist for more control. From a progressive perspective it’s a cant lose scenario.
It’s called lawfare. The libs in goverment uses taxpayer money to attack tax paper rights, the tax payers use their own money to defend those rights. It is solely to drain resources. It will continue until the cancers in goverment are forced to pay for these cases with their own money
Because they’re getting away with it.
Remember, the 9th circuit is the home of Judge Reinhardt, who when asked about his nutty rulings contrary to Supreme court precedent, said, “They can’t reverse them all!”
The idea is that the Supreme court simply doesn’t have enough time to reverse all the bad rulings the 9th circuit is issuing, and so some of them will stand by default.
Of course, this assumes the Supreme court doesn’t get pissed, and start issuing summary reversals. Which they really ought to do, if they don’t want to be dealing with lower court resistance for years to come.
Because they’ve realized SCOTUS is impotent. SCOTUS has no enforcement arm.
So SCOTUS can strike a law down – and they can just re-write the law and the process starts all over.
It won’t be long before they just say ‘fuck it’ and openly ignore SCOTUS.
+1
I’ve come to this conclusion about IL’s PICA law. The interpretation of the victory relies on some unknown averages and statistics. Namely, approximately 6% of US gun owners own a Brady-definition assault weapon. However, IL gun owners are not your average US gun owner as (nominally) 100% of them have FOID cards, wait for their guns, live in places that already banned the sale and practice of keeping them, etc. Much of which has gone between unheard by SCOTUS and plainly unchallenged.
It’s the same old, “BOAF SIDEZ”/”We banned the sale of guns within 1000 ft. of schools and no gun shops within 1000 ft. of schools challenged it so…”/”I punched you in the face so, now, let’s just agree to disagree until I feel like punching you again” bullshit.
They are going to bring a thousand laws to the courts in the hope that one will pass muster with a cowed SCOTUS. Threatening judges outside of their homes is against the law but that law is rarely enforced. It’s like threatening Jews holed up in a library, no one goes down for it.
Apparently it takes a while for it to sink in that the United States is engaged in a full-on civil war. Even though everyone who posts here regularly knows the facts, it’s very difficult for us to admit to ourselves that a “culture” war is still a war. The officials who control the government of California could not care less what the Constitution of the United States of America or the Second Amendment says or means. They could not care less whether the Supreme Court rules against them or not. The gloves are off, the knives are no longer sheathed. Open violence is just a simmering heartbeat away and only the obvious fact that the opposition to the socialists is well-armed, well-trained and is refraining from taking them and their pet “protestors” down forcefully only because they are not able to project their malice outside of the blue cities. If I were Newsom I would not count on that situation holding for much longer.
F%^K Dear Leader Newsom and his party. We will not comply!
a makarov in an uncle mikes holster..my go to stock firearm image as well
DC Libertarians do “guns” the way Harvard presidents talk about the First Amendment.
These are the people who think an M113 is a tank because it has tracks and a ‘big canon’ (ie, an HMG).
There was one ‘journalist’ on Twitter during the early part of the Ukraine-Russia war that kept talking about how the US was ‘escalating the war’ by ‘giving Ukraine tanks’ – They were APC and IFV’s. He doubled down by posting a picture of an SPG and wasn’t happy when people pointed out that that wasn’t a tank either.
He styles himself as a ‘war correspondent’ too;)
S.Korea Opposition Leader Stabbed, Conscious
Lee Jae-myung is reportedly conscious after being stabbed in the neck by an unnamed attacker who reportedly was wearing a paper crown with Lee’s name on it during a visit to Busan Tuesday.
The South Korean opposition leader – who narrowly lost the 2022 presidential elections – suffered a 1cm gash to his neck but was airlifted to a nearby hospital.
Lee is currently on trial for alleged bribery from his time as mayor of Seongnam, which he rubbished as “fiction” and a “political conspiracy”.
You think THIS is bad, you oughta see what’s going on in Florida!
Yep, it’s terrible.
Subject/Law Long Guns Hand Guns
State permit required to purchase? No No
Firearm registration? No No
Assault weapon law? No No
Magazine capacity restriction? No No
Owner license required? No No
Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground law? Yes Yes
State preemption of local restrictions? Yes Yes
NFA weapons restricted? No No
Peaceable Journey laws? No No
Background checks required for private sales? No No
Peaceable Journey laws? No No
This one is supposed to be “Yes Yes” correct? As in “Yes, the state of Florida allows you to travel through the state without harassing you with their own state and local firearms laws”.
Laws like this are necessary to insure the safety of Criminals of Color.
Liberal judges should be put in concentration camps.
No, but they should be denied police protection especially after 911 calls as well as being denied gun permits.
After a federal judge deemed the state’s location-specific gun bans unconstitutional, the 9th Circuit stayed his injunction.
But the courts dealing several victories to men who “just want to read books to children” while ridiculing women in the name of, uh,
sexualizing children, er,free speechsexual freedom (Yeah! That’s the ticket!) is a meaningful contribution to the social movement and not unconstitutional, immoral, or just idiotic pandering.Reason #10,417 to NOT live in California.
Why the quotes, Sullum? They are repugnant.
Also, for those capable of watching multiple bowl games on multiple channels:
The deadline for IL’s PICA act came and went with the New Year. For those not familiar, IL already requires an FOID for all firearms and ammunition transfers. You could buy/own all kinds of “scary”, “assaulty”-type, weapons, you just had to have a FOID… until Jan. 1, 2024. “To be fair”, they granted a grace period to register and grandfather the devices, that is whole firearms, accessories, and/or ammunition that would otherwise make such firearms illegal.
To wit, total FOID cardholders as of 2024: 2,415,481
Total persons registering devices in compliance with PICA: 15,164 (0.6%, not 6%, 0.6%)
Total items registered in compliance with PICA: 51,978
There are varying ways of guesstimating how many people and devices the ISP is going to have to round up to effectively enforce the law but it’s almost certainly between half a million people and 8 million devices.
While this is tempting to regard as a W for gun rights, given the IL people and the government’s history, nothing will change. The State will be content to have prevented the sale of all new items under State law and simply won’t enforce the law against someone who hasn’t otherwise broken the law and would go to jail anyway.
I can’t believe that California missed the most important area where concealed carry should be illegal – at ATMs. They should also have mandated “Gun Free Zone” signs at all banks.
Criminals need to know where they are safe.
This is one of the reasons normal people are leaving California. No way I will ever set foot in that shithole.