The judges emphasized that their holding does not assess whether the Second Amendment protects “some ability” to carry firearms in public – an issue that the U.S. Supreme Court tackled in the landmark case Heller v. District of Columbia, which says the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm for “traditionally lawful” purposes.
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Writing a dissenting opinion, Circuit Judge Consuelo M. Callahan said the majority ruling was an infringement on the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.
UCLA Law School professor Eugene Volokh said he thinks there is less chance that the high court will hear the California case than the three that came before it because there are now only eight justices.
Today, California, Hawaii, and some Northeastern states retain the right to decide who gets to carry concealed weapons in public. “No wonder the Supreme Court reverses the Ninth Circuit more than any other Circuit”. “The ruling misrepresented our complaint”, Second Amendment Foundation Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb told Guns.com.
Thursday’s ruling in California has now placed thousands of applications for concealed carry permits on hold in the state. It was consistent with rulings since 2012 in three other circuits upholding similar restrictions in New York, Maryland and New Jersey.
In most of the country, you need a permit to carry a concealed weapon, but there are some exceptions.
In 2012, the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the only statewide ban on carrying concealed weapons, in IL. “Significantly, the Peruta decision specifically avoided answering the critical legal question of whether, if concealed carry is prohibited, some form of open carry of firearms must be allowed”, he told Guns.com.
According to the concealed-carry California law, a gun permit applicant must provide a reasonable cause to carry an unseen weapon, but it is up to local law enforcement agencies to define good cause and set the restrictions on permits.
The National Rifle Association called the ruling “out of touch”. So, the United States contains examples such as Idaho, which chose to have no barrier between owning a gun and legally being able to hide carry. “Judges like most people do not want to see people carrying guns into Starbucks”.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wisely upheld a California law on Thursday that empowers local sheriffs to deny permits for concealed firearms to people unless they can show a specific need.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has had a mixed record on gun control issues.
But Sen. Ginny Burdick, the chamber’s Democratic majority leader and a strong gun control advocate, said that’s unlikely. He never considered revising it, although he acknowledges it’s more restrictive than other such policies in California. That decision improperly upended the longstanding interpretation of the 2nd Amendment “well-regulated militia” clause that limited the right to keep and bear arms to organized military units.
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“In the decades following the Civil War and the ratification of the 14 Amendment-which applied much of the Bill of Rights to the states-this consensus grew”.
