Why it matters: The 9th Circuit just handed gun owners a massive win, ruling that California can't ban open carry just because they allow concealed carry. This isn't some technicality—it's a fundamental shift in how courts view your right to bear arms.

The Court of Appeals told California what many of us have known for years: you can't play constitutional whack-a-mole with the Second Amendment. In Baird v. Bonta, Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote that "for most of American history, open carry has been the default manner of lawful carry for firearms."

The legal reality: This decision affects California's urban counties, which contain 95% of the state's population. California became "the only state in the Ninth Circuit that has entirely banned open carry for the overwhelming majority of its citizens" after expanding restrictions in 2011.

Bruen Comes Home to Roost

The decision leans hard on the Supreme Court's 2022 Bruen ruling, which requires gun restrictions to be "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." California's lawyers tried getting cute by citing 19th-century concealed carry bans to justify their open carry prohibition.

Between the lines: That argument backfired spectacularly. Those historical concealed carry bans actually protected open carry—state courts said it was clearly covered by the Second Amendment. California basically proved the plaintiff's case for them.

VanDyke noted that for California's first 162 years, "open carry was a largely unremarkable part of daily life." The court found zero evidence of open carry restrictions at the founding or when the 14th Amendment was adopted.

The Mulford Act's Ugly History

California's modern mess started with the 1967 Mulford Act, which banned open carry of loaded firearms without permits. VanDyke didn't mince words—the law was "tainted with racial animus," passed because legislators got nervous about Black Panthers showing up armed at the state Capitol.

That's right—California's gun control started with politicians who didn't like seeing certain people exercise their constitutional rights. The restrictions kept expanding until 2011, when they banned carrying unloaded firearms too.

Court Rejects 'Pick One' Logic

Judge N. Randy Smith dissented, arguing California could ban open carry as long as they permit concealed carry. The majority wasn't having it.

VanDyke delivered what might be the best constitutional analogy I've read: "If the Supreme Court said, 'States cannot ban speech altogether,' nobody would think it was also implicitly saying that as long as the state allows some speech, it necessarily can ban all other speech."

The legal reality: Between 1822 and 1850, six state high courts explicitly distinguished between open and concealed carry for constitutional purposes. They're not interchangeable rights—they're separate protections with different historical traditions.

Historical Reality Check

Here's something modern politicians don't want to acknowledge: our ancestors viewed concealed carry as "sneaky, dishonorable, and inherently suspect." Open carry was considered the honorable way to go armed.

Louisiana's Supreme Court put it perfectly in 1850, noting that open carry "places men upon an equality" and "is calculated to incite men to a manly and noble defence of themselves." They understood something we've forgotten—there's a difference between carrying honestly and hiding your intentions.

California's Licensing Shell Game

Judge Kenneth Lee's concurrence caught California playing games in rural counties. While the state claims residents of counties under 200,000 can apply for open carry licenses, "California admits that it has no record of even one open-carry license being issued."

What this means for you: If you're in Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, or Washington, this ruling applies to your state. California will almost certainly appeal to the Supreme Court, which could mean nationwide clarification of open carry rights.

The bottom line: States can't offer you one form of carry while banning another—both have distinct constitutional protections rooted in American history. This decision represents the biggest shift in Second Amendment jurisprudence since Bruen, and it's only the beginning of courts taking constitutional carry seriously again.

Read the original article in The Handbook | By BGC Staff

Join the Discussion

How do you think this ruling will actually play out in practice for folks in California and the other affected states—are you expecting a flood of open carry, or do you think most people will stick with concealed anyway?