About 10 months ago it was predicted that California will be shall issue in 2014. But it appears that prediction was contingent upon the Supreme Court resolving the split between the circuits on the issue of whether carry outside the home is a protected right or not. The court did not accept the cases presented to them.
But the case in Idaho, which is in the Ninth Circuit and includes California, from the other day which just ruled regulation of carry outside the home is subject to at least intermediate scrutiny and perhaps strict scrutiny. That case could help California residents.
Regardless of how things are going at the Federal level that prediction is getting a little closer to realization:
In a decision released today that forces the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to begin accepting and processing handgun carry license applications, Judge Deirdre Hill said that LASD must “consider the applications of all persons seeking a CCW permit in the first instance without requiring any applicant to first seek a CCW permit with his/her local police chief or city.”
The case, titled Lu v. Baca, was filed in 2012 by California-based gun rights organization The Calguns Foundation and a number of individual plaintiffs seeking to overturn an unlawful LASD policy that functioned as a de facto ban on handgun carry licenses for Los Angeles County residents.
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Is the government appealing that federal court ruling? If the Ninth Circuit gets it, it’s likely to be overturned….
The Ninth is already pending decisions on two California and one Hawaii shall issue cases with an existing precedent that intermediate scrutiny is the minimum that can be used, from Nordyke.
If Cali goes shall-issue statewide and Hawaii is forced to actually issue permits (they have never issued one AFAIK) there won’t be a “may-issue” state left that doesn’t border the North Atlantic. Cali’s permit rush will make Illinois look like a trickle.
The case against Baca was a state case, not Federal. What is key to note is that Judge Hill is an African-American female who, before becoming a state trial judge, was the LAPD Inspector General and had served as chair of the Police Commission. She was appointed to the bench by former CA Gov Gray Davis (a democrat). Clearly if a liberal Black woman who was part of the government machine can see the problem, others can too.
I suspect her ruling will help other judges grow some balls and show a little courage.
BTW – there are a lot of parallels between gay marriage and the RTKBA. Liberals who push for one and don’t accept the other are on the losing end of the constitution.