Appeals Court Allows California's Public Spaces Gun Ban to Go Into Effect

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction on a California law that bans the carrying of guns in most public places.

The law, which was declared unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney, means that as of January 1, California residents will be unable to carry a firearm in "sensitive places" such as hospitals, playgrounds, stadiums, zoos, and places of worship.

Judge Carney wrote in his opinion that the law "is sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court." 

The three-judge panel issued an "administrative stay" until the full 9th Circuit appeals court could hear the case and the litigation could play out.

"This ruling will allow California's common-sense gun laws to remain in place while we appeal the district court's dangerous ruling," California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement.

There's nothing "common sense" about the law, as Judge Carney made clear. It's a blatant end-run around the Supreme Court.

The Bruen decision in 2022 gave Americans the right to carry a firearm in public, granting as an exception a limited number of "sensitive places" where firearms could be banned.

California has made a mockery of those "exceptions."

Reuters:

California, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the United States, was among a group of states with similar laws as New York, and following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision moved to revamp its firearms regulations.

Under California's new law, people could not carry concealed guns in 26 categories of "sensitive places" including hospitals, playgrounds, stadiums, zoos and places of worship, regardless of whether they had permits to carry concealed weapons.

The law, Senate Bill 2, also barred people from having concealed guns at privately owned commercial establishments that are open to the public, unless the business's operator posts a sign allowing license holders to carry guns on their property.

Judge Carney didn't pull any punches in his disdain for the law or the tactics being used by the radical Calfornia Democrats.

The law "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," Carney wrote.

After the Dec. 20 ruling, Chuck Michel, the California Rifle and Pistol Association’s president, said, "California progressive politicians refuse to accept the Supreme Court's mandate from the [New York] Bruen case and are trying every creative ploy they can imagine to get around it. The Court saw through the State's gambit." 

The appeals court should not have allowed the law to go into effect. The injunction could have stood until the case was entirely litigated. The court's decision to issue an administrative stay of the injunction was politics, not law. There was no emergency that the appeals court was responding to. It was simple left-wing politics disguised as law.

To have a permit to carry and then be prevented from doing so in a huge number of locations in the state violates the spirit of Bruen and possibly even the plain language wording of the Supreme Court's ruling.