California's SB2 blocked by 9th Circuit Court

[puma guy]

9th Circuit Court blocks California SB2. The highly restrictive legislation has been blocked by the Federal Court.
https://americanjournaldaily.com/federa ... ilypatriot

[Rafe]

This is a huge 2A issue. But the Patriot Journal article is misleading. It opens with: "A California law that defied the U.S. Supreme Court has been blocked by a federal court."

That's not at all what's happened.

SB2 was one of over 20 firearm bills that Gov. Gavin "Glamor Only" Newsom signed last September. SB2 lists a staggering 26 different types of places where those who hold California hard-to-get concealed carry permits would not be allowed to carry.

If anyone is curious--and wants to be thankful again that they live in Texas--the text of this lovely state senate bill can be found here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/face ... 2320240SB2

It includes some statements--presented as fact--that y'all will enjoy. For example:

Over the past several years, a wealth of empirical studies have shown that crime is higher when more people carry firearms in public places.

Broadly allowing individuals to carry firearms in most public areas increases the number of people wounded and killed by gun violence.

Widespread carrying of firearms also impedes the exercise of other fundamental rights. When firearms are present in public spaces, it makes those places less safe, which discourages people from attending protests, going to school, peacefully worshiping, voting in person, and enjoying other activities.

Widespread public carry also intimidates those who hope to peacefully worship.

Carrying firearms impedes the exercise of other rights of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, including the right to protest and vote.

Broad public carry laws also impede the ability of law enforcement to ensure the public’s safety.

The new law was scheduled to go into effect January 1, but the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California had issued a preliminary injunction last month blocking SB2. The judge, Cormac Carney, ruled that SB2 did not meet the two-stage test as defined by SCOTUS in the Bruen case (i.e., does the plain text of the 2A allow the state's regulation and, if the regulation would otherwise be allowed under the 2A plain text, is the law "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation"?).

Following the (correct) District Court ruling by Cormac Carney, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals then issued a stay to Carney's ruling.

What's happened now is that the 9th has dissolved its own stay...meaning that the injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California is back in place and the law won't go into effect this month.

However, the way I read the whole thing, the 9th Circuit's dissolution of its stay isn't the definitive win that some websites and blogs are touting. Basically, the 9th Circuit only "unstayed" its own stay, which means Judge Carney's preliminary injunction is back in place. No new laws right now, but California Attorney General Rob Bonta is going to proceed with the state's appeal...which will go back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

His argument is (or at least was) that Judge Carney and the district court incorrectly interpreted the Bruen test. You can wade through some of this in a PDF that's on the Firearms Policy Coalition's website, but I gather that, basically, Bonta argues that:

1. California has a long history of regulating places where the carrying of firearms is restricted or prevented, making the new laws "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation";
2. That Bruen did not prevent restrictions to carry in defined "sensitive places," that in fact it included language noting that the decision did not negate longstanding "laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings";
3. And that a 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals (New York City) decision has already set post-Bruen precedent that upholds a state law that contained "similar" locational carry restrictions.

This stuff is on pages 4 through 6 in that linked PDF.

So I don't think Californians--or we--should start cheering just yet. The 9th already showed it was willing to stay Judge Cormac Carney's preliminary injunction.

If I was a betting man, I'd wager a dollar that the 9th will eventually rule in favor of the California attorney general, and then the 9th's ruling will have to be appealed to SCOTUS. I think the core problem is that the District Court found that SB2 did meet the first requirement of the "Bruen Test." At issue now will be whether or not California can prohibit carry in described "sensitive places." Admittedly, what they're trying to restrict is carrying almost everywhere that you might define as "public," but I believe this is still far from decided.

This issue potentially has broad-reaching ramifications. If it goes to SCOTUS and the decision is that the states can claim any declared locations they want—e.g., any crosswalk at a roadway intersection that has a streetlight—as prohibited to licensed carry, it...wouldn't be good.

[Paladin]

Widespread carrying of firearms also impedes the exercise of other fundamental rights. When firearms are present in public spaces, it makes those places less safe, which discourages people from attending protests...

After running this through a leftist translator converting into common language it reads "when the general public is armed it endangers our communist terrorist street actions" "for example several firearms carriers including Kyle Rittenhouse and SGT Perry have reduced/discouraged further communist terror actions."

[The Annoyed Man]

Although I have to set aside the sound of his voice, I follow Mark Smith's "The Four Boxes Diner" YouTube channel, and he goes over this in great detail. Among other things, he explains why SB2 will fail when it gets before SCOTUS.

Among other things, he points out that the WHY is as important as the WHAT and the HOW when examining founding era analogs for modern gun control laws. For instance, the left argues that in the founding era, there were laws limiting the amount of black powder one could lawfully possess in one's home (the WHAT). This is being pointed out as an analog for why ammunition access and magazine capacity can be controlled today. But that assertion ignores the HOW and the WHY of those laws. The founding era law didn’t forbid ownership of black powder stores in excess of the legal limit for home storage; or even the possession of large amounts of gunpowder, but it did mandate that amounts in excess of that legal limit must be stored in a Powder House located outside of the town (the HOW). The reason for this (the WHY) was because virtually every man-made structure in a town were made of wood, and if a fire got started in a home, and a lot of those homes had a lot of gunpowder in them, that fire could burn the whole town down.

Of course, their assertion about the WHY of the historical analog ignores the fact that a huge percentage of the population did not even live in towns, and they could have as much powder in their homes and barns as they could afford and have the space to accommodate. So, for the left to successfully argue that a modern law limiting ammunition possession and magazine capacity was analogous to the founding era law, they would have to meet that analog exactly. This means that they would:

1. have to prove that the historical analog forbade the ownership of large amounts of gunpowder (it did not);
2. have to prove that modern smokeless powder presents a fire danger equal to that of black powder (it doesn’t);
3. have to prove that modern smokeless gunpowder is the same as magazines and cartridges; (it's not)
4. and they would have to prove that the historical analog extends to how many rounds one can have in a magazine, or how many rounds they can store in homes that are largely no longer built out of founding era materials using founding era building plans……and then SOMEhow they would have to extend that principle to even rural residents where none of those standards would logically apply.

The biggest danger isn’t that any of these totalitarian laws would survive when having to face the current SCOTUS court makeup. That’s not it at all. Under the current court's makeup, these laws will most likely fail. The real danger is that, by passing a flood of unconstitutional laws, the dems are counting on it resulting in decades of constitutional litigation—each case of which will take years to each wend its way up to SCOTUS—and that by then the left will have been able to flip the left/right makeup of the court, and their unconstitutional laws will stand.

Prior to Roe v. Wade in 1973, the left's preferred religious sacrament of making abortion a "right," and forcing those who objected on conscience to help pay for it all, was not the law of the land. With the Roe decision, the left's preferred religious doctrine lasted for 49 years until it was overturned in 2022. That could change again down the road. Courts change. No matter how flawless the reasoning in Bruen, courts change, and as Obama so loved to tell us, elections have consequences.

My point here is NOT to advocate for one party's presidential candidate or another. My point is that things can change, they can change for the worse, and it can happen seemingly all of a sudden…because most people are blind to the prodromal symptoms that are predictive of black swan events. Black swan events, when viewed in hindsight, have almost always been utterly predictable. (If you print too much money, inflation happens. Print enough too much money, and your economy will crash. The crash was predictable, but nobody wanted to consider the possibility.) But black swans are not predictable on the foresight end because people are oblivious, and their natural state is head in the sand normalcy bias.

Bruen was a flawless decision, based on flawless reasoning. But it cannot be trusted, because humanity cannot be trusted. The center cannot hold. Sooner or later, court decisions in favor of liberty will have to be backed up by force of arms…not by our military, but by We The People, who have had their last button pushed, their last nerve trod on, and the pitchforks and torches will have to be brought out.

So the REAL lesson is, never trust your gov’t, even when some part of it seems to do something right. Gov’t WILL turn on you. It’s the ONLY thing in political life that you CAN absolutely count on. So it is incumbent on smart, right-thinking people, to be willing to hoist the Jolly Roger if necessary and tell gov’t where to step off.