Over 16,000 Californians applications for a concealed carry permit hang in permanent limbo in San Francisco’s Federal courthouse. It all stemmed from when California’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a measure denying San Francisco Police Department – and other anti-gun institutions in California – from unilaterally denying law-abiding citizens’ requests for a concealed carry permit.
Don’t worry. That didn’t stop San Francisco from still violating those Californians rights when a surge of applications came flooding in.
Now, opening arguments are being heard as to why those applications should have been processed and why carrying concealed should be permitted. For those 16,000 Californians, even if the court rules in the favor of the constitution of the United States of America, they will likely have to re-apply.
So Few Accepted, So Many Denied
Many people living in San Francisco and the surrounding area don’t bother applying for a concealed carry permit. Why? Because with the lowest acceptance rate in the state, all it does is add a “denial” to that person’s record. This makes it much harder to get a concealed permit elsewhere in the state.
According to The Center for Investigative Reporting, many of the applications have extremely valid justification.
Some applicants were brief and to the point, like the consultant who simply wrote “self-defense” as his reason for wanting to carry his Sig Sauer P226 9 mm pistol.
Others said they needed a gun because they handled money or other valuables, like the bus driver who described himself as an “easy target” when carrying large sums of cash. Or the security guard who said his store had been robbed by the “Pink Panthers.”
A Department of Homeland Security employee, who previously held a concealed carry permit in Washington, applied to carry a gun while on temporary military status. A pastry chef who works early-morning hours wrote in her application, “I have never been directly threatened but being alone at those hours I feel the need of protection as a just in case sort of scenario.”
English Law Cited as Proof that Prohibition of Weapons is Valid
According to the Amicus Brief filed by Everytown for Gun Safety, anti-gun fanatics are citing law from the 1300s as base argument for why a prohibition on publicly carrying firearms is valid.
WHAT?! English courts determining our interpretation (or lack thereof) of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution – Bill of Rights? It gets better…
1. Beginning in 1328, England broadly restricts public carry in populated areas. The Anglo-American tradition of restricting public carry in populated areas stretches
back to at least 1328, when England enacted the Statute of Northampton, providing that “no Man great nor small” shall “go nor ride armed by night nor by day, in Fairs, Markets, nor in the presence of the Justices or other Ministers, nor in no part elsewhere.”2 Edw. 3, 258, ch. 3 (1328).
The brief then goes on to say that King Edward the III and his successors followed this example after directing sheriffs and bailiffs to arrest “all those whom [they] shall find going armed.”*
*Charles, The Faces of the Second Amendment Outside the Home, 60 Clev. St. L. Rev. 1, 13-14 (2012)
Everytown for Gun Safety leaves an open pocket in their argument by admitting that even the English did not extend their prohibition on weapons to the sparsely patrolled wilderness.
This prohibition “did not extend to the realm’s unpopulated and unprotected enclaves,” however, because “English law generally made exceptions for the use of arms in the countryside.”
According to the opening 15 Amicus Briefs – filed by those both for and against the argument – there is going to be even more insanity ensuing as the court proceeds.
Everytown for Gun Safety is just one of a bunch of anti-gun organizations which operate under the false notion that police are omnipresent and able to protect people immediately when violence breaks out.
If considering that faulty point of logic, the idea that San Franciscans and other Californians have no innate right to the Second Amendment makes perfect sense. When considering reality – a bus driver carrying cash, a business owner opening early in the morning, etc. – police cannot protect everyone all the time. And when we look at the spike in negligent discharges just from Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, we see that the police may not even be the best qualified to protect us.
But for tens of thousands of Californians with a concealed permit application in limbo, the beat goes on.