With a court ruling against part of California’s version of a carry-killer bill, a lot of people are talking about how much worse things are about to be in the Golden State.
You see, the rhetoric is all about how people are going to start carrying in more places and with fewer restrictions on who can carry and it’s going to turn the state into the Old West.
Which is funny because the Old West was damn near a Hollywood invention, at least as most people know it.
Luckily, the media is ready to explain what’s happening to folks.
Democrats running California’s government have passed some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but those efforts to restrict firearm access are increasingly facing successful challenges in court.
Gun rights groups have been aggressively fighting the laws, often winning initial rulings in their favor before heading to appeal. They’ve gotten a recent boost from the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which set a new standard for interpreting gun laws. That standard says gun laws must be assessed by whether they are “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
They won again on Wednesday, when a federal judge temporarily blocked a law that would ban people from carrying guns in most public places.
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WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The law was supposed to take effect on Jan. 1. Now, the law is on hold while the case makes its way through the federal court system. California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta said he will appeal the ruling, saying “we believe the court got this wrong.” The case could ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Carney said he thought the law would ultimately be struck down.
Throughout that entire piece, though, there’s something important that’s being missed.
Nothing has changed about where people can carry under California law.
See, the new law was set to go into effect on January 1, 2024, but because that implementation has been blocked by the court, what exists in California is basically just the status quo.
That’s interesting because we’ve been told California has the very best gun control laws on the books as they currently stand. If that’s true, then the status quo shouldn’t be that objectionable.
Despite that fact, we’re hearing a lot of doom and gloom coming from anti-gunners in the state. They seem to think that allowing people to carry pretty much anywhere is somehow an affront to all that is good and decent in the land.
But they allowed people to carry guns in numerous places before Bruen restricted what they could and couldn’t do, so why is it now suddenly a problem?
Moreover, why is it that so many people completely ignore this fact in discussing this case?
Could it be that they don’t want people to be comforted by the fact that at least the law is something they’ve been around for years? I mean, people who are afraid make decisions that others might not, so a terrified electorate is probably beneficial to anti-gunners.
Unfortunately, most people in California probably haven’t even thought about that.
