California’s Second Amendment Infringements Weaken as Court Strikes Down Open Carry Law
Another unconstitutional California firearm law falls after pro-Second Amendment court ruling.
California residents may now openly carry a legally purchased firearm without fear of prosecution following a 2–1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Yes, that Ninth Circuit.
Circuit Judges Lawrence VanDyke and Kenneth Lee, both appointed by President Donald Trump, held that California’s open-carry restrictions violate the Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment precedent in the Bruen case, which requires firearm regulations to be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of gun regulation. Prior to the ruling, California arbitrarily prohibited open carry in any county with a population exceeding 200,000 residents.
"In our Nation’s history and tradition, open carry was widely recognized as being central to the Second Amendment right," VanDyke wrote. "A ban on that which is at the core of the Second Amendment is not a 'minimal burden' on the Second Amendment right."
Addressing the statute’s population-based restrictions, Judge Lee sharply criticized the state for obscuring where open carry remained legal, particularly in smaller counties.
"But that appears to be the very point—California tries to hide the fact that citizens in those counties have a right to open carry their weapon under the law," Lee wrote. "Our constitutional rights, however, should not hinge on a Where’s Waldo quiz."
In a dissenting opinion, U.S. Circuit Judge N. Randy Smith said his colleagues had misinterpreted the Supreme Court’s decision in the landmark firearm ruling New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen.
"A state may not prohibit the public carriage of firearms by eliminating both open and concealed carry, but a state can lawfully eliminate one manner of carry to protect and ensure the safety of its citizens, as long as they are able to carry in another manner," he wrote.
California's Firearm Blockade
Smith’s dissent rests on the premise that California residents can freely obtain concealed carry permits and that, as a result, the state should be permitted to prohibit open carry.
In reality, decades of gun control policy and the influence of radicalized anti-gun NGOs have left even the Second Amendment rights California claims to allow severely neutered. In jurisdictions like Los Angeles, concealed carry permit applications are routinely swept delayed or ignored, prompting even more lawsuits.
As a result, the Justice Department began cracking down on the Los Angeles Police Department for systematically denying residents their rights. Out of thousands of permit applications, the vast majority remained unprocessed for months, sometimes years, effectively preventing law-abiding citizens from exercising their Second Amendment rights.
But these infringements only scratch the surface of the Golden State’s endless violations of the Second Amendment. California’s gun control policies impose magazine capacity restrictions, ban all .50-caliber firearms, mandate microstamping on cartridges, and outlaw ill-defined "assault rifles."
These policies, and countless others, have earned California the "honor" of being ranked number one for gun control laws by the radical advocacy group Everytown—a title law-abiding Americans should rightly interpret as number one for constitutional violations.
(READ MORE: FBI-Suppressed Data Shows Armed Citizens Stop Over 50% of Active Shooters, Not 3.7%)
Second Amendment Victories
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s decision to overturn California’s unconstitutional open carry ban is the latest victory for the Second Amendment in the United States.
Since taking office in 2025, President Donald Trump has continued to stand by his campaign promise to protect gun owners. In December, Trump reaffirmed that commitment by establishing a landmark Second Amendment civil rights division.
The Trump administration also replaced the Biden-era "Zero Tolerance" policy, which shuttered gun stores at record rates, with a compliance-based approach designed to assist gun dealers rather than punish them for minor clerical errors. President Trump further abolished the Biden-created White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, an unprecedented executive-branch office that many Second Amendment advocates viewed as a mechanism for gun-control groups to influence firearm policy.
The momentum is now shifting in favor of gun owners in America, something that has not occurred in many years, but there is still much work to be done. As Americans watch the longtime bastion of gun control, California, begin to collapse in court, they must demand the same results in their own states.
The Second Amendment articulates a God-given inherent human right, and it is time Americans treat it as such.
(MORE GUN RIGHTS: Gavin Newsom's Latest Gun Grab: Banning Glocks for Everyone... Except Criminals)
