News Ninth Circuit takes up challenge against California restrictions on open carry of firearms

[drinktothat421]

I'm curious, why do you think it is a "poor tactical decision"?

Makes you a target. Good or bad

 

[DB>)>]

Open carry in a low density environment doesn't seem like a bad thing, but in a high density environment, where the risk of being disarmed by some nut job or criminal, concealed would seem to be significantly tactically superior. I ALWAYS carry a "whittlin' knife", deep pocket clip, and once in a while I've been asked about it (typically by another knife guy), but I don't go around flipping it out! More than once I've had a shady character approach, and just reaching towards my pocket provides a significant change of demeanor, no deployment or brandishing required.



When the youth were educated and raised with blades, firearms, and discipline, things were different. Culturally and socially we tended to raise adults with common sense and impulse control....

Now the possibility of encountering a rabid Karen or other species of socio/psychopath is very high, so openly displaying a firearm (or other weapon) is significantly more of a risk! As others have mentioned, it could also raise the spectre of "friendly fire" incident.

Perhaps we should try raising better, responsible humans instead of monsters? Freedom would work more efficiently and effectively that way...

Beware the monsters "we" create...

 

[treelogger]

Carrying an unloaded gun is the dumbest thing I have everr heard

Open carrying an unloaded gun is mostly not about self defense. It is about free speech. The gun can convey a message to the person seeing it, or modify or strengthen a message that the person is making otherwise.

 

[DB>)>]

We can dream, but tomorrow we will still wake up in California.... sigh.

 

[Mil-Dot]

Open carrying an unloaded gun is mostly not about self defense. It is about free speech. The gun can convey a message to the person seeing it, or modify or strengthen a message that the person is making otherwise.

I look at it as you're asking for unwanted attention or you are looking for confrontation which is the last thing you want to escalate a situation when you have a firesrm.

 

[USMC06RET]

In a nutshell: The US has a long tradition of limiting certain aspects of guns. One example is that certain forms of carry are prohibited: in general, open carry can be prohibited, as long as some form of carry is available to the general public. Another example is that carrying guns in public (whether concealed or open) can be tied to a permit. This current legal situation has been confirmed several times by the Supreme Court.

Now I understand, you are basically presenting part of AG Bonta's argument as to why this appeal should fail.

Please clarify: (A) Would you like to see ONLY permit-less open carry? And still require a permit for concealed carry? Or (B) Would you like to see all carry to be permit less, and you are assuming that people will want to carry open?

Relative to this specific appeal, I am in favor of all residents of California being able to obtain a permit for open carry. In a perfect world, I am in favor of California abiding by the second amendment and instituting laws like Texas where all residents who can legally own weapons, can carry weapons, open or concealed.

We are either in favor of the second amendment or we are not. I for one am not willing to surrender my right to bear arms, which is one of the two enumerated rights in the 2nd amendment, see below. To require government permitting is to "infringe" upon our rights.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."​

Government permitting for any kind of carry creates a "special" class of citizen and I am 100% against that kind of discrimination. Yes, I know that people come up with all kinds of justifications and excuses for why we need government infringement upon our constitutional rights but, that is the exact same mindset of the people who make laws against magazines of greater than a specified capacity, etc.

 

[treelogger]

Now I understand, you are basically presenting part of AG Bonta's argument as to why this appeal should fail.

I would describe it as presenting the current legal situation.

We are either in favor of the second amendment or we are not. I for one am not willing to surrender my right to bear arms, which is one of the two enumerated rights in the 2nd amendment, see below. To require government permitting is to "infringe" upon our rights.

You seem to understand the 2A to mean "everyone bear, everywhere, all the time, in a manner of their choosing". Alas, you don't get to decide what the 2A means; nor do I. We have courts for that. And the courts have decided that "bear" can be restricted with permits, manner (open vs. concealed), places (sensitive ones for example), and people (not certain people). In the Bruen framework, it would be necessary to find historical traditions that such restrictions have not existed in the past, and that test will fail; there are plenty of examples in Bruen itself.

Government permitting for any kind of carry creates a "special" class of citizen and I am 100% against that kind of discrimination.

While I applaud your goal of a completely egalitarian society, the reality is that different classes of citizens exist, and have always existed. Examples include people under 18, people who are confined in psychiatric institutions, citizens versus resident and immigrant aliens versus visitors versus illegally present, people in jail or under various legal bans (convicted felons, under restraining orders), and so on. Take your "permitting creates a special class" argument and try to apply it to driver's licenses, building permits, or paying taxes, and you see how much it doesn't work in today's society. Here is another fun example: If you live in school district A, try sending your kid to school in district B.

 

[USMC06RET]

I would describe it as presenting the current legal situation.

I would beg to differ, you have only presented one side of the legal "situation", the side of the state.

You seem to understand the 2A to mean "everyone bear, everywhere, all the time, in a manner of their choosing". Alas, you don't get to decide what the 2A means; nor do I. We have courts for that. And the courts have decided that "bear" can be restricted with permits, manner (open vs. concealed), places (sensitive ones for example), and people (not certain people). In the Bruen framework, it would be necessary to find historical traditions that such restrictions have not existed in the past, and that test will fail; there are plenty of examples in Bruen itself.

Again, I beg to differ! Please refer below to the preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In fact it is every citizen's right and obligation to decide what the constitution means. You are free to surrender that right and blindly accept what justices might decide but, if I take issue with their decisions, I will challenge them. That is what our legal system is all about. No decision, not even by SCOTUS, is truly final. One need only look at a number of previous SCOTUS decisions that have been recently reversed, Roe v. Wade is one excellent example.

Bruen isn't the defensive embattlement that you seem to think it is when it comes to carry laws. The first firearm carry permit in the US was established in 1911 in NY by the Sullivan law and there were no concealed carry permits required prior to the 1920's in California. Resultantly, historical precedent is far more on the side of permitless carry. Constitutional or open carry has an even more expansive history.

While I applaud your goal of a completely egalitarian society, the reality is that different classes of citizens exist, and have always existed. Examples include people under 18, people who are confined in psychiatric institutions, citizens versus resident and immigrant aliens versus visitors versus illegally present, people in jail or under various legal bans (convicted felons, under restraining orders), and so on. Take your "permitting creates a special class" argument and try to apply it to driver's licenses, building permits, or paying taxes, and you see how much it doesn't work in today's society. Here is another fun example: If you live in school district A, try sending your kid to school in district B.

Sadly, you are building straw man arguments by over simplifying my position as being egalitarian; by comparing driver's licenses to 2nd amendment issues as well as everything else you have mentioned.

My position is simple: Every person in the United States who can legally posses firearms is entitled to bear such arms without the infringement of those constitutional rights by the government. All of the straw man arguments you have presented are not in direct contradiction with specifically enumerated rights in the constitution.

 

[TFA777]

I thought it was Heller but I must be misremembering but one of the concurring opinions in a SCOTUS case said it is no excuse to say because there's a temple they can ban churches (because DC banned handguns saying oh well you can have a shotgun).

in the same way it's no excuse to say because you can conceal carry that we can ban open carry.

 

[treelogger]

Heller went over that in great detail, coming to the conclusion that the handgun is the most common and most practical means of self defense at home. If you read Scalia's opinion (which is very well written), he makes it quite clear: the core of the 2A is to defend yourself in your own home, and the city of DC can't ban the most common and best means to do so.

About 15 or 20 years ago, around the time some folks in San Diego were holding open carry protest marches (while wearing kilts!), there was a pretty detailed lawsuit, which concluded that some manner of "bear" must be available, but the state does not allow all possible form of "bear", as long as one common and useful form is available. Does anyone remember what case that was?

 

[Jimi Jah]

The "living, breathing document" crowd has managed to change/alter interpretations of the constitution far beyond what originalist thinkers would ever accept. That ship has sailed.

Best way to fight back is to elect conservatives that will appoint originalist judges.

 

[TFA777]

Heller went over that in great detail, coming to the conclusion that the handgun is the most common and most practical means of self defense at home. If you read Scalia's opinion (which is very well written), he makes it quite clear: the core of the 2A is to defend yourself in your own home, and the city of DC can't ban the most common and best means to do so.

About 15 or 20 years ago, around the time some folks in San Diego were holding open carry protest marches (while wearing kilts!), there was a pretty detailed lawsuit, which concluded that some manner of "bear" must be available, but the state does not allow all possible form of "bear", as long as one common and useful form is available. Does anyone remember what case that was?

wasn't there a case or pending litigation regarding carrying while protesting. 2A and 1A combined is the most BOR thing ever. There's laws against carrying at a protest which i think stemmed from the Black Panther / Reagan gun control period. May be conflating things though.

 

[treelogger]

wasn't there a case or pending litigation regarding carrying while protesting. 2A and 1A combined is the most BOR thing ever. There's laws against carrying at a protest which i think stemmed from the Black Panther / Reagan gun control period. May be conflating things though.

The only case I know about the 1A aspect of carrying guns is Zeleny. There are probably much more, I just happen to not be familiar with them. In that case, it was initially a pure 1A case: he didn't want to shoot at all, matter-of-fact I think he intentionally had no ammo on him. He was carrying a rifle purely to make a point, as a form of free speech, so the 2A was not involved. He initially won big against the city of Menlo Park (I think made a large 6-digit amount off them), but that win doesn't help gun rights, other than by re-confirming that one movie production (which just takes a cell phone set on "record"!) is exempt from the open carry ban. But last I heard, he lost pretty badly against the state, when he was trying to use this to overturn the open carry ban on 2A grounds.

What makes this all more complex is that Mr. Zeleny is not a clean case: he is a colorful character, hyper-smart but quite on the spectrum, and while he is definitely a "gun person", his cause in this context is not actually furthering gun rights, but harassing (probably justifiably so) a well-known venture capitalist. That VC is accused of sexually abusing his own daughter, who happens to be Mr. Zeleny's ex-GF. To make matters more spicy, the accused abuser VC has since fled the US to avoid criminal charges over the abuse and lives in his native China, while Mr. Zeleny (while US educated) is so much "Russian emigre" that is becomes cartoonish. I bet quite a few judges in Zeleny's cases are wondering why they get caught up in a geopolitical squabble.

The important thing to note here is what I hinted at: Carrying an UNLOADED firearm while not having ammo on you probably has nothing to do with the 2A, as it is not a functioning "arm" in the sense of the thing the 2A wants you to keep and bear. That activity is pure 1A. On the other extreme, a concealed loaded handgun is certainly an arm that is being borne, but is clearly not a form of speech, as it is not noticeable by any intended recipient of the speech (concealed, duh). So that is pure 2A. The various forms of open carry of more or less loaded arms (less if the person has the arm and carries the ammo or magazine separately) are where the 1A and 2A intersect. That's probably not a good thing for trying to create good case law for furthering civil rights, since it makes the cases overly complicated.

On a personal note: Having worked for years on Sand Hill Road, and still occasionally having business there, I actually drove by Mr. Zeleny standing there, saw him, and thought "Hmm, that guy looks strangely familiar, why is he standing there with a rifle". He was so out of context that only a few weeks later (when I heard about his arrest and lawsuit and saw his name) I put 2 and 2 together, and figured out that this is the P210 Michael I know.