Obama District Court Judge Rules California’s Non-Resident Concealed Carry Ban Violates the Second Amendment

The State cannot point to a single law from the Founding or framing tradition that wholesale blocked nonresidents from participating in a general firearms licensing scheme. As the Ninth Circuit has explained, Bruen and Heller have “imposed a challenging burden on the government where the regulation in question addressed an issue that has existed since the Founding, had not been affected by a technological change, and did not concern a uniquely modern problem.”

Opening the application process to nonresidents does not limit California’s ability to regulate who receives a CCW license based on other measured parameters. 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. Although prompted by Plaintiffs in the briefing, the State offers no response to the persuasive reasoning in that case.

— District Court Judge (and Obama appointee) Cathy Ann Bencivengo in Hoffman v. Bonta