California's refusal to issue non-residents concealed carry permits is unconstitutional, judge rules

SAN DIEGO (CN) — A California law that prohibits non-residents of the state from applying for a concealed carry gun permit violates both the Second and Fourteenth Amendment, a San Diego federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

“Opening the application process to nonresidents does not limit California’s ability to regulate who receives a CCW license based on other measured parameters,” wrote U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo, a Barack Obama appointee, in her order. “Nonresidents are simply afforded the same chance guaranteed to residents to exercise their Second Amendment rights. In reaching this conclusion, the court agrees with its sister court in the Central District that the challenged statutory framework’s exclusion of nonresidents violates the Second Amendment.”

The plaintiffs in the case, all members of the Firearms Policy Coalition, a guns rights organization, and all concealed carry permit holders in their states of residence, including Pennsylvania, Idaho, and New Mexico, filed their suit challenging California law last year when they wanted to visit the state and bring their guns for self-defense.

When they learned that California doesn’t have reciprocity laws allowing concealed carry permit holders from other states to legally tote their guns while visiting, and that only residents of the state can apply for concealed carry permits, they filed suit against state Attorney General Rob Bonta in San Diego federal court.

Bonta argued that the Second Amendment doesn’t mandate that a traveler be allowed to use another state’s concealed carry license in California. In order to bolster their argument, the state provided historical analogies of restrictive concealed carry laws enacted during the Reconstruction era of the 19th century. The state also provided examples of concealed carry restrictions enacted in nine colonies or states in the 1700s and 1800s that required licensing requirements as a prerequisite for carrying or owning weapons.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen , which held New York’s concealed carry laws were unconstitutional and that carrying a gun in public is a constitutional right, all local governments must justify their own gun regulations by showing they’re consistent with gun regulations in the country’s past.

When pressed to provide a regulation from the country’s past that limits nonresidents of a state from owning a gun or a concealed carry permit, the state came up with a California law from the early 1900s that appears to impose residency requirements on licenses and a law that prevents Native Americans from having a license.

Not only do the laws the state provided ignore the “expanded conception of rights-bearing peoples,” they also don’t date from when the Second Amendment was ratified, Bencivengo said. The state also ignores a 19th century city of Sacramento law that exempt “travelers” from a firearms licensing requirement that applied to residents, she added.

“In effect, they argue that nonresidents do not qualify as ‘the people.’ The Supreme Court has not interpreted ‘the people’ so narrowly,” Bencivengo wrote, granting the plaintiffs motion for summary judgment. “Indeed, it is beyond debate that the individual plaintiffs are ‘people’ living in the United States.”

The plaintiffs are entitled to injunctive relief against the law while the parties meet and confer and submit a proposed order for an injunction within 30 days, she added.

“This important judgment means that people must maintain their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms when they cross California’s border. Just as people are free to speak or worship in states they don’t reside in, this makes clear they are likewise free to bear arms for lawful purposes throughout the United States,” wrote Brandon Combs,  Firearms Policy Coalition’s president, in a press release.

Representatives for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“California is committed to defending our commonsense firearm safety laws. We are reviewing the opinion,” a spokesperson for the California Attorney General’s office wrote in an email.