A full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit yesterday handed down a ruling that effectively denies millions of law-abiding Californians their constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense.
As NRA-ILA pointed out in a news update penned immediately following the ruling, the issue in the case is simple: Does the Second Amendment allow California officials to deny the state’s residents the only effective means they have of carrying a firearm for self-defense in public, without showing an extraordinary need to do so? The answer is simple—no—and it was answered correctly in an opinion by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit back in 2014.
In reversing the panel’s decision, the full court deceptively recast the issue as whether plaintiffs, who “wish to carry concealed firearms in public” but “do not satisfy the good cause requirements in their counties” nevertheless have a Second Amendment right to be issued concealed-carry licenses. In her dissenting opinion, Judge Consuelo M. Callahan called the majority’s framing of the case “an elaborate straw man.”
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