In His Response to Suit Challenging California’s Non-Resident Carry Ban, AG Bonta Knows Nothing, Admits Nothing

In a post last month, we told readers about a lawsuit against the State of California (and its attorney general, Rob Bonta) over the state’s practice of completely banning non-residents from lawfully carrying firearms. After NYSRPA v. Bruen, the state was forced to move to a “shall issue” permitting system rather than arbitrarily and capriciously leaving it up to local sheriffs whether to issue carry permit.

While that was a big improvement for Californians — and one that the state has fought back against with its Bruen response bill, visitors to the state still have no avenue to legally carry.

This is clearly unconstitutional. As the original lawsuit argued, states cannot treat visitors who are U.S. citizens as if they have fewer rights than those who live in California. So, the Firearms Policy Coalition and four of its members (including one who writes here) have sued the state for this blatantly unconstitutional practice.

It won’t surprise you to learn that the state didn’t respond to the lawsuit by admitting that they were wrong and promising to do better. Instead, their response was both weak and lazily written, possibly because AG Bonta and his crew don’t see how they can prevail under Bruen (more on that in a bit).

Most of the state’s response is legal copypasta, that gets more humorous the more you read it. It basically goes something like this . . .

The Attorney General is without sufficient information to form a belief as to the truth of XXX, and on that basis denies them entirely. The allegations in paragraph X are legal conclusions to which no response is required. To the extent any allegations in paragraph X may be deemed factual allegations, the attorney general denies them.

Bonta is basically adopting the Sergeant Schultz defense here.

Over and over and over again. Very little work went into the response and there’s nothing to be gained by reading it. Simply denying everything means they can still argue about the plaintiffs’ assertions later as the case progresses. It’s a bit like throwing things behind you as you run in the hopes that whomever is giving chase will be slowed down enough to let you go for now.

About the only thing the AG’s office admits to knowing is whether the plaintiffs’ allegations are rooted in either the state or federal Constitution or in the Bruen decision. You know…items of clear fact that even they aren’t shameless enough to deny.

As for everything else argued by the plaintiffs, it’s all either denied or claimed to be beyond the Attorney General’s ability to know…such as whether the named plaitiffs even desire to carry a gun in California.

The Attorney General is without sufficient information to form a belief as to the truth of Plaintiffs’ allegations in Paragraph 11 that Mr. Hoffman desires to carry a firearm in public for self-defense while he visits California . . .

The Attorney General is without sufficient information to form a belief as to the truth of Plaintiffs’ allegations in Paragraph 13 that Mr. Orrin desires to carry a firearm in public for self-defense while he visits California . . .

The Attorney General is without sufficient information to form a belief as to the truth of Plaintiffs’ allegations in Paragraph 15 that Ms. Sensiba desires to carry a firearm in public for self-defense while she visits California . . .

He does, however, admit that he is, in fact the Attorney General of the state of California, which should probably be considered a win. As for the rest of the allegations, no matter how simple or basic, it’s all denied.

At the end of the day, the state’s filing is only an opening move and a chance for the defendant to admit or deny plaintiffs’ allegations, so we really shouldn’t expect fuller arguments about the lawsuit at this point. But even here we can see that the state intends to make an issue of literally anything they can in order to delay the day a court ultimately rules against them.