California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the self-proclaimed frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, has never met a gun control law he doesn’t like. So, a recent and reasonable 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in an important Second Amendment case has Newsome crying foul. Specifically, California’s unconstitutional ban on open carry.
California Ban on Open Carry Struck Down
On January 2, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court in the case Baird v. Bonta held that the Golden State’s ban on open carry in counties with a population of more than 200,000 people violated the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Ruling
In the ruling, penned by Judge Lawrence VanDyke, the court explained the history of open carry of firearms in most of the nation, as compared to California’s restriction on the practice.
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“For most of American history, open carry has been the default manner of lawful carry for firearms,” the ruling explained. “It remains the norm across the country—more than 30 states generally allow open carry to this day, including states with significant urban populations. Indeed, several of our Nation’s largest cities and states recently returned to unlicensed open carry by explicitly authorizing it. Similarly, for the first 162 years of its history open carry was a largely unremarkable part of daily life in California.”
With its 200,000 threshold, the law actually prohibits open carry in areas of the state where 95% of Californians live and work. Only about 2 million people, about 5% of the population, live in the counties with less than 200,000 population, which are not covered by the law.
The court explained in the ruling how the law fails to meet the second standard of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling, which requires the government to prove a historic precedent exists for the law.
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“Although this court has recently confronted a panoply of Second Amendment cases, this case stands out in that it unquestionably involves a historical practice—open carry—that predates ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791,” VanDyke stated. “The historical record makes unmistakably plain that open carry is part of this Nation’s history and tradition. It was clearly protected at the time of the Founding and at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The Newsom Meltdown
Of course, upon learning of the ruling, Gov. Newsom quickly took to social media to decry the ruling. And, of course, to do some name-calling in the process, as any good liberal anti-gunner is likely to do.
“California just got military troops with weapons of war off of the streets of our cities, but now Republican activists on the Ninth Circuit want to replace them with gunslingers and return to the days of the Wild West,” Newsom wrote in a Facebook post. “California’s law was carefully crafted to comply with the Second Amendment, and we’re confident this decision will not stand.”
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While lauding the ruling, the National Rifle Association (NRA) warned that the 9th Circuit has a nasty habit of its three-judge panel ruling in favor of the Second Amendment, then review by the full 9th Circuit upon appeal, yielding just the opposite result.
“While Judge VanDyke’s opinion provides great insight into Bruen and its application, the Ninth Circuit is infamous for overturning opinions upholding the Second Amendment on en banc review,” NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) stated in a news item on the ruling. “Whether Baird will suffer that fate as well remains to be seen, but Second Amendment advocates in the Golden State are well acquainted with this doleful scenario.”
There’s little doubt Gov. Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta will appeal the ruling. Ultimately, we can only hope that the decision of the panel, based strongly on the Bruen ruling, will stand in the long run.
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