
VanDyke wrote that because states were already grappling with gun violence in 17, California had to show a “distinctly similar” historical law to its current open-carry laws in order for the latter to be constitutional today - and not just “any general firearm regulation California might unearth” from the past.
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Many are closely watching a case the Supreme Court will hear soon that deals with laws restricting gun possession by domestic abusers, to see if the nation’s high court will provide any additional instructions on how to apply Bruen.Ĭonservative judges have generally applied Bruen more strictly than liberal ones, and VanDyke’s ruling Thursday was no exception. The Bruen decision was sufficiently vague that judges have been interpreting it in different ways since.

The latter amendment prohibits states from depriving people of property without due process of law. With Bruen, the Supreme Court said that gun laws are legitimate only if they existed or are sufficiently similar in some way to laws that existed in 1791, when the 2nd Amendment was passed, or 1868, when the 14th Amendment was passed. However, they said, VanDyke went a step further by offering a standard for how California might meet Bruen’s requirements that was even stricter than what the Supreme Court articulated. Legal experts said that if VanDyke had stopped there, the decision would have been less important than procedural. VanDyke wrote that if the lower court determines that California’s licensing laws impact rights covered by the 2nd Amendment, the lower court must then apply the Bruen test.

Instead, he said, it simply denied the injunction on the grounds that it could “endanger public safety” by temporarily depriving California of its “primary means of limiting public handgun carrying to ‘ordinary, law-abiding citizens.’” However, the lower court did not do that, VanDyke wrote. In his decision Thursday, Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, wrote that the lower court must consider the likelihood that Baird and Gallegos would ultimately prevail in their claim that the bans are unconstitutional. People who live in jurisdictions with fewer than 200,000 residents, such as Baird and Gallardo, can apply for open-carry licenses from local law enforcement, but such licenses are also difficult to obtain.īaird and Gallardo first sued over the laws more than four years ago, alleging they violate their 2nd Amendment right to bear arms for self-defense. California generally bars people who live in counties with more than 200,000 residents from openly carrying handguns, though there are some exceptions.
