Disappointing, if not at all unexpected decision. I’m not doing a full thread right now, but some especially erroneous portions.

Such as claiming that Teter said something outlandish and out of step, when it’s actually what THE SUPREME COURT SAID. Teter was just quoting the Supreme Court, as this acknowledges by mentioning (but ignoring) Heller. Incredible. There is no other right in the original Bill of Rights for which the “operative period” is the reconstruction era.

Paging @fourboxesdiner

California has filed its reply in May and Carralero, so here's a thread on some of my thoughts.

You can read it here:

Starting off, I won't speak for the Carralero plaintiffs, but our point was that such security is an indication of what government truly considers to be sensitive, as opposed to things it claims in bad faith are sensitive in order to restrict carry.drive.google.com/file/d/1hs8JXk… Bruen demands representative historical laws. If there are only a few outliers, then they are not representative of our historical tradition.

Circuit Courts could not give less of a shit that the Supreme Court said interest balancing analysis is not appropriate. They are doing it anyway, and blatantly.

Will SCOTUS do anything about it?

https://twitter.com/gunpolicy/status/1765849982744121769

All their historical analogues are from the 20th century, except for bowie knife laws. But those were carry laws, not possession bans.

The first of the three CRPA vs. LASD oppositions is in, from La Verne. Two more expected today from LASD and the Attorney General.

Granted I have my bias, but I am not impressed with this brief in the least. They cite almost no caselaw to support them, and their argument boils down to "other cities are doing it so we can too!".

On the psych exam, they don't address any of the points we made about why this particular exam is especially abusive, requiring a drive of an hour each way, only on weekdays. The DOJ brief is in now too, and I'm still reading through it, but it's interesting that they spend a lot of time justifying the idea of permits as a concept. That's not really our argument here. their point seems to be that local regulation is allowed, but California doesn't even provide a pathway for nonresidents to get a permit, let alone honor permits of other states.

As is often the case with a shooting that breaks into the national debate, we already see celebrities, media elites, and others lining up to talk down to conservatives about how heartless they are being for not passing more gun laws.

To understand this apparent conservative intransigence on guns, you have to be aware of a few points:

1. Conservatives do not have any power in most large cities. Kansas City, for example, has had only Democrat mayors since 1930, save for one exception who left office back in 1991. Given these cities have completely rejected them politically, conservatives don't feel particularly responsible for their plight.

2. Much of Hollywood hates conservatives and makes that clear. Being a conservative usually means making peace with the fact that most of the artists and other famous people you enjoy following despise your beliefs. Not all, to be sure, but a very large amount.

3. Conservative voters are often not particularly wealthy, with a number of rural towns struggling a lot in recent years. Drugs have become a major problem, as have deaths of despair more generally.

4. They've watched in horror as more and more cities have increasingly let criminals walk with little or no consequences. They also saw rioters go completely unpunished in 2020 because they were rioting for "the right reasons".

5. They increasingly do not identify with the prevailing values of many large cities, which they see as immoral and irresponsible.

6. They've always had guns, and lots of them. They grew up with them and are comfortable around them. There can be problems with guns, namely as a tool for suicide. But murder with them is rare.

So poverty, drugs, resentment, and lots of guns. According to the gun control orthodoxy, this should equate to a bloodbath, right?

Wrong.

Take Missouri as an example. It had 629 gun-related homicides in 2022, a dismal number. But 474 of those were in just two major cities - St. Louis and Kansas City. Dozens of smaller counties did not have a single homicide of any kind, gun-related or otherwise.

If Kansas City and St. Louis combined to form their own state with their two million total people, they'd have a gun-related homicide rate of 23.7 per 100,000 people. The rest of Missouri, with a remaining population of over four million people? 3.7 per 100,000. About six times less.

So popular culture, famous athletes and the major media come demanding of these people that they have to curtail their own rights, because cities in which they have no power can't get their shit together? When the leaders of those cities constantly talk down to them and despise them, no less?

Why would you expect these conservative-leaning populations to listen to your lectures? You've accepted none of their ideas, you've tried the same thing over and over for decades, and the resulting high violent crime is, to them, entirely predictable.

We've seen that it doesn't have to be this way. Look at what Mayor Suarez, one of the few Republican big city mayors, has accomplished in Miami.

Contrary to racist views that success in big cities are limited to those that are very white, Miami is a very diverse city where white people make up less than half the population. It also had a horrifyingly violent past in relatively recent history ("The Year of Dangerous Days" by Nicholas Griffin is quite a good read on that topic). In 1980, homicides in the city reached an astonishing 220 dead.

Last year, Miami had 31 homicides. That's the lowest in its history. In 1947, the first year they counted, it had 32, and the population back then was much lower than today. This is in a state that enacted constitutional carry recently too, for all those who warned that too would be a disaster. It hasn't been a problem.

So quit lecturing conservatives, quit demanding others compromise their rights, and quit voting for the same failed leadership pushing the same trash ideologies of government dependence, tolerance for criminality, and failure.

The continued devastation seen in cities like Kansas City is the CHOICE of its voters. And until they make a different one, they have only themselves to blame. Source:

cbsnews.com/miami/news/mia…

My first* law review article is now published. Coauthored with @CRPAPresident, we go through the overwhelming history that demonstrates that so-called "assault weapons" are what earlier generations would consider to be the most protected arms of all under the Second Amendment. Link below for those who want to read the final version.

*and with how much work this was, maybe it will be my only law review article.🤣 scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/cgi/viewconten…

The Hawaii Supreme Court released a ruling that sounds like Everytown wrote it for them. They say Heller was wrongly decided, and talk about the historical tradition of the former Kingdom of Hawaii as if that is at all relevant.

A lowlights thread. Note that this "crime" occurred pre-Bruen, when Hawaii had never issued any permit to anyone. So it's insane the State gets to argue he should have applied for a CCW permit.

Alright, I try and avoid bothering Jake but this is one of our cases. So a quick thread.

For one, the "innovation" in question is an ammunition background check that forces people to pay money each time they buy ammunition, that wrongly denies over 10% of buyers, and of the very few actually prohibited people it catches, the State arrests just 2%. The purpose of this "innovation" seems to be harassing law-abiding gun owners, not stopping crime. Bruen itself cautions against reliance on pre-founding history, so I don't get how this is arbitrary.

In a reply to a comment on this, Jake asserts that no true originalist would argue a law from 1786 is less persuasive than one from 1787. I agree, but that's not what we're talking about here. Besides one law that was a declaration of rights for protestants, the newest English law the State presented was from 1689. I don't know why anyone would think that particularly relevant.

OK - after a chaotic (in a good way) morning, it's time I finally read the actual ruling I'd say haha. Love me a Benitez highlights thread!

First thing is first, please support CRPA for making this possible. Join and donate at crpa.org
A big point Judge Benitez made at the hearings I was at was that he thought the original form of Prop 63 was fine. You get a purchase permit relatively affordably, and then it is good for four years.

But CA immediately changed what the voters enacted into something much more abusive.

Alright, finally home after being stuck in traffic. We got out of the hearing today around 4 or so, and Judge Carney had issued a ruling less than an hour later. Never had one that quick before, it's a good feeling.

First thing is first, support CRPA, SAF, GOA, GOC, GOF, and LGC for more wins like what we have today in May v. Bonta.

And credit as well to the FPC team for Carralero v. Bonta, who challenged some provisions we did not and scored wins on those as well.

Now going to read through the ruling and post my thoughts as I go. @slowdowncounsel argued for the May plaintiffs today. I "asked" him to do so (no way I was going to let him say no) both because he is way better than me at oral argument, and based on how well he did in Boland with Judge Carney. He repeated that excellent performance today. While the ruling was clearly drafted and ready to go, he rebutted the State's arguments masterfully and erased any chance of Carney reconsidering his draft.

Our FPC colleagues Brad Benbrook and Steve Duvernay did a great job too.

But really, Judge Carney gave the State about 2/3 of the hearing time. With the benefit of hindsight now knowing the ruling was drafted, I think he was basically giving them a chance to change his mind. They clearly didn't.

Judge Carney's questions were mostly general and philosophical. He asked the State whether it believes there is a general right of self-defense. He also gave the example of court staff being assaulted on public transportation, including one incident where a knife was involved that could have easily turned deadly. He asked whether they should have the right to effective self-defense.

But the actual details of the hearing aren't that important now, because we have a ruling! So let's get to that.

In the past, I had plotted out Giffords grades compared to gun-related homicide rate, and shown there is no correlation between the two. Your state may have a high, low, or medium grade from Giffords, and it has essentially no predictive value as to what your homicide rate will be.

I figured I'd update that for the 2022 data, and because I felt like coloring today, I decided to give a more visual representation.

These are states listed by their gun-related homicide rate in 2022, lowest to highest. The color corresponds to their grade from Giffords for gun control. So:

Green = A
Blue = B
Yellow = C
Orange = D
Red = F

The color includes all the grades in that range. So for example, a state marked with Yellow may have a C-, C, or C+. I could have broken it down further I guess, but this is good enough. The District of Columbia was included as Green because although they aren't graded by Giffords, they have always been a gun control darling that passes everything the antigun side demands.

As can be seen below, there certainly isn't any general shift from green to red that would indicate gun control works. Instead, the grades are all over the place. Having increased amounts of gun control just does not mean you will have less gun-related homicide.

Instead, and as anyone paying attention knows, the differences are clearly regional. Northeastern states, regardless of their gun control laws, generally have low homicide rates. Southern states, regardless of their gun control laws, generally have high homicide rates. And the midwestern and western states are somewhere in between. Here is the Giffords scorecard I used.

giffords.org/lawcenter/reso…

Alright, a thread on this ruling, which is massive.

Before reading, I must say that I expected absolutely nothing from this rough panel. In that sense, killing the vampire rule is a big win.

While all portions of these Bruen tantrum laws are awful, the vampire rule is what really made it so that getting a carry permit is pointless, because private businesses are completely unavoidable in day to day life. Only the bans on carrying on public transportation come close to that level of totally killing the right to carry (if you are someone who relies on public transportation).

https://twitter.com/gunpolicy/status/1733129728058380657

I am going to skip the background sections and procedural history and jump right to the analysis.

Panel can't help itself, highlights Justice Stevens's dissent to imply there is no individual right.

@CRPAnews, @GunOwners, @2AFDN, @GunOwnersCA, @GunFoundation are settling all of their scores when it comes to CCW permit issuance in California. We’re taking on the ridiculous wait times of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, the high fees of the La Verne Police Department, and the subjective suitability determinations both of them use, including the psychological exam in La Verne.

Obviously, more than just LASD and LVPD are doing these sorts of things, but with a victory in this case, we hope to set precedent applicable to other issuing authorities with the same unacceptable policies and practices.

But there’s one other big issue too.

No other constitutional right ends at state borders. Yet if you are not a California resident, you have effectively no way to legally carry here, because California does not honor the permits of any other states. Even if you are willing to go through the hassle of getting a California CCW permit, nonresidents are not eligible for one. One of our Plaintiffs is a Florida resident who was denied a permit for that reason. Other plaintiffs are California residents who don’t want to deal with high fees or long wait times in their jurisdiction, but their Utah and Arizona permits are invalid here.

Thus, we are also suing the Attorney General to establish reciprocity. California must honor permits issued by other states, or at absolute minimum, the State must create a timely and affordable avenue for nonresidents to get California CCW permits.

A motion for preliminary injunction will follow in the coming weeks. You can read the complaint here: crpa.org/news/blogs/crp…

Good luck to @NatlGunRights on their petition with SCOTUS. Would certainly be huge if the sleeping giant finally woke up and sent a message to the antigun circuit courts.

However, I encourage everyone to be sober in their expectations. Supreme Court intervention, particularly early intervention, is always a longshot. If you expect it to happen, you will usually be disappointed.

A short thread on the petition. I love the use of the federal government's oral argument here.

We finally heard back from the Contra Costa Sheriff as to their unique quirk of not allowing red dots, lasers, and light attachments to carry handguns (night sights are allowed).

Unfortunately, the Sheriff won't budge on this policy. He writes that he has a Firearms Committee he consults on these questions, made up of employees who are firearms instructors. The committee recommended against changing the policy.

The reasons are (I summarize, these are not quotes):

1. Permittees could use inferior accessories that are not subject to vetting and could hinder the performance of the firearm.

2. Without proper training, the attachments can make a smooth weapon draw difficult, endangering the individual in a deadly force encounter.

3. The attachments make carried handguns harder to conceal.

Suffice it to say, this reasoning is meritless. These attachments are not an issue in the rest of California (or the rest of the country). If anyone has had a negative outcome due to an attachment, it certainly isn't a common occurrence.

As to concealability, plenty of lights and lasers don't even add to the length of the pistol and don't affect the draw noticeably. And holsters are specifically made with lights, lasers, and red dots in mind to ensure solid retention. Plus, the attachments enhance safety by helping to make sure the individual hits their assailant and only their assailant, particularly in dark environments.

This may be something we have to return to in the future, after some other priorities are in the rearview mirror. The department also doesn't allow single-action firearms to be carried, such as the very popular 1911 platform and its smaller variants.

Just filed our reply brief in May v. Bonta on behalf of @CRPAnews, @2AFDN, @GunOwners, @GunOwnersCA, @liberalgunclub, @RenoMayGuns, @armedscholaryt, and more.

Along with the reply brief, we've also submitted a rebuttal expert declaration which includes an appendix pointing out how California took several historical laws out of context, or otherwise mischaracterized them in their opposition brief. (As was verified using their own submitted historical compendium).

We've also submitted many evidentiary objections and a Daubert motion to their "expert" declarations, which were problematic because they:

1. Opined a lot about Bruen, which is not the place of experts in litigation;

2. Presented lengthy histories of a given topic (hospitals, parks, etc.) but didn't really talk about the history of firearm regulation in those places, or made excuses for why it didn't exist;

3. Complained that history is hard and that they need more time (even though Senator Portantino bragged that SB2 was totally constitutional before it even passed - which we point out in the reply brief). You can read the reply brief here:

The other supporting documents I referenced will be available on our firm's website or on Courtlistener soon.drive.google.com/file/d/15FLidj…

We've file our motion for preliminary injunction to stop Illinois's "assault weapon" registration requirement on behalf of Federal Firearms Licensees of Illinois, @GSL_IL , @GunOwners, @GunFoundation, @piasaarmory, and individual plaintiffs.

You can read it here:
We make two due process arguments, the first being that Illinois has not made a serious effort to provide notice to those affected.

Even if someone is aware their rifle, pistol, or shotgun is affected, many are not aware that the law even requires registration of underlying parts. A loose pistol grip must be registered. Or @FreedomSsteel's lightsaber.

Alright, a quick reaction thread. The majority first, written by Judge Woods and joined by Judge Easterbrook.

Already off to a horrible start. What falls outside the Second Amendment's protected "arms" has nothing to do with a "military side". Plenty of firearms the military uses now or has used in the past are common among American civilians.

"Arms" refers to "weapons of offence, or armor of defence". There is no qualifications about exempting those arms used by soldiers.

https://twitter.com/gunpolicy/status/1720544039089426901

The contempt for Heller and its progeny is palpable.

Remember that their "many years" is just from around the 1930s to 2008. In the 19th century, all major commentators agreed that the Second Amendment applied to an individual right.

Thread on the dissent in Duncan.

https://twitter.com/MorosKostas/status/1711832407207502035

Judge Bumatay rightfully calls out the majority for offering no serious explanation other than some district courts upholding similar laws.

Alright, a highlights thread of Benitez's ruling in Duncan.

He comes out swinging against the Newsoms of the world, correctly noting his job is to enforce the law, not to fear public criticism.

https://twitter.com/MorosKostas/status/1705294415819047313

This was one of the point we raised in our arguments when California kept trying to set 10 as some magical line. Different states set different limits, for what is a fundamental right applicable to all states.

Duncan is out. This is not a drill.

Reading shortly. Stayed for ten days though so no freedom week. Ruling here

courtlistener.com/docket/6082773…