{"id":101358,"date":"2024-04-15T13:08:11","date_gmt":"2024-04-15T18:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=101358"},"modified":"2024-04-15T13:08:31","modified_gmt":"2024-04-15T18:08:31","slug":"101358","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=101358","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

San Diego federal lawsuit challenges law banning most non-California residents from carrying guns<\/a><\/p>\n

A firearms advocacy group and three people who live in Pennsylvania, Idaho and New Mexico filed a lawsuit Thursday in San Diego federal court challenging a state law that mostly bans non-California residents from carrying guns in the state.<\/p>\n

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The lawsuit alleges that the regulation violates the Second Amendment and 14th Amendment and should be overturned. It claims the law is \u201cunconstitutionally restrictive\u201d and bars the plaintiffs from carrying guns in California even though each have been issued concealed-carry permits in their home states.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndividuals like Plaintiffs do not lose protection of their rights under the First Amendment\u2019s speech or religion clauses when they cross state lines. Nor do they lose their protections under the Fourth Amendment\u2019s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures,\u201d the lawsuit alleges. \u201cThey likewise do not surrender their Second Amendment protected rights when they travel outside their home state.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The office of state Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is the named defendant in the case, did not respond to a request for comment. Bonta\u2019s office has vigorously defended the state\u2019s challenged gun laws and other weapons laws in the past.<\/div>\n
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The lawsuit alleges that the three plaintiffs live out of state and wish to carry firearms when they visit California but are legally barred from doing so. The suit claims that the main exception to the law \u2014 for certain people who live out of state but operate a business in California and spend significant time at the business \u2014 is so narrow that it\u2019s irrelevant.<\/div>\n
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Included among the plaintiffs is Christopher Hoffman, a Pittsburgh resident who lived in San Diego County between 1990 and 2012. According to the lawsuit, the San Diego County Sheriff\u2019s Department previously issued Hoffman a concealed-carry weapon, or CCW, license on multiple occasions when he resided in the county.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHoffman … frequently returns to San Diego County to visit family and friends,\u201d the lawsuit states. \u201cHoffman desires to carry a firearm in public for self-defense while he visits California and would do so if California law permitted him to.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The suit makes similar claims as to plaintiffs Chad Orrin, a former California resident who now lives in Idaho, and Jennifer Sensiba, a New Mexico resident. All three of the individual plaintiffs are members of the Firearms Policy Coalition, which is also a plaintiff in the suit.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThe right to bear arms doesn\u2019t end at California\u2019s border,\u201d Brandon Combs, founder and president of Firearms Policy Coalition, said in a statement. \u201cWe look forward to eliminating this unconstitutional ban and restoring liberty in the Golden State.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suit is the latest in a long list of challenges to California\u2019s strict weapons laws filed in San Diego federal court in recent years. Other lawsuits have challenged the state\u2019s bans on\u00a0assault rifles<\/a>,\u00a0large-capacity magazines<\/a>,\u00a0frequent gun purchases<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0switchblades<\/a>.<\/p>\n

San Diego became a favorite venue for such challenges thanks in part to the decisions of U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, who so frequently ruled in favor of striking down California\u2019s weapons laws that gun enthusiasts\u00a0gave him the moniker \u201cSt. Benitez<\/a>.\u201d For a time, Second Amendment advocates used a\u00a0local court rule<\/a>\u00a0regarding related cases to get weapons challenges to Benitez\u2019s courtroom even after those cases were initially and randomly assigned to different judges.<\/p>\n

The local court\u00a0amended that rule last year<\/a>\u00a0even before so-called judge shopping become a national issue. Last month, the U.S. Judicial Conference\u00a0issued new guidance<\/a>\u00a0aimed at ensuring constitutional cases with nationwide implications be assigned randomly, and this week Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell\u00a0each proposed bills<\/a>\u00a0to change how cases are assigned.<\/p>\n

The suit challenging California\u2019s non-resident gun ban was randomly assigned to U.S. District Judge Cathy Bencivengo.<\/p>\n

Gun rights groups have found success in the courts with various judges over the better part of the past two years stemming from the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s landmark 2022 decision in\u00a0New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen<\/i>, which established a new standard for analyzing the legality of weapons restrictions.<\/p>\n

Courts considering whether modern gun regulations are legal must now make their decisions based on the \u201cSecond Amendment\u2019s plain text\u201d and must ensure modern laws are \u201cconsistent with the nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation,\u201d according to the Bruen<\/i>\u00a0decision.<\/p>\n

Under that analysis, Benitez and other federal judges in San Diego have over the past year overturned California laws\u00a0banning assault rifles<\/a>,\u00a0outlawing billy clubs<\/a>,\u00a0imposing background checks for ammunition purchases<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0banning certain \u201cunsafe\u201d handguns<\/a>. All of those rulings are under appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

San Diego federal lawsuit challenges law banning most non-California residents from carrying guns A firearms advocacy group and three people who live in Pennsylvania, Idaho and New Mexico filed a lawsuit Thursday in San Diego federal court challenging a state law that mostly bans non-California residents from carrying guns in the state. The lawsuit alleges … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,50,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-goobermint","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101358"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101360,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101358\/revisions\/101360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}