As of Jan. 1, Californians are banned from carrying permitted concealed handguns in virtually the entire state. There is no evidence that permit holders have caused problems in California or elsewhere in the country, but the new law will prevent people from defending themselves. California has also jeopardized safety in recent years by cutting police budgets and electing district attorneys who refuse to prosecute violent criminals.
California now bans carrying concealed handguns in 26 types of locations, including parks, playgrounds, churches, banks, and zoos. Businesses are automatic gun-free zones unless they post signs that explicitly allow people to carry.
But to make sure that no one carries for protection, California’s attorney general enacted new emergency rules in December that will strip nearly all firearms trainers of their licenses to train. California mandates 16 hours of training to get a permit, and this requirement will now be very difficult to fulfill.
A federal district court judge issued a preliminary injunction against the new restrictions on where permit holders can carry, saying that the law is presumptively unconstitutional and unlikely to meet the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision. This standard requires provisions to be “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Without explanation, however, a Democrat-dominated circuit court panel has stayed the injunction, allowing the new law to go into effect.
While California is making the whole state a gun-free zone, criminologists and economists who have published peer-reviewed research on gun control agreed that the
