LOS ANGELES (AP) — A new California law that bans people from carrying firearms in most public places was once again blocked from taking effect Saturday as a court case challenging it continues.
A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel dissolved a temporary hold on a lower court injunction blocking the law. The hold was issued by a different 9th Circuit panel and had allowed the law to go into effect Jan. 1.
Saturday’s decision keeps in place a Dec. 20 ruling by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney blocking the law. Carney said that it violates the Second Amendment and that gun rights groups would likely prevail in proving it unconstitutional.
The law, signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, prohibits people from carrying concealed guns in 26 types of places including public parks and playgrounds, churches, banks and zoos. The ban applies regardless of whether a person has a concealed carry permit.
Businesses also have a broad right to refuse service and have people written up for trespassing if they refuse to leave. Having a gun is not a protected class. At that point hanging a sign saying no guns is completely enforceable unless the state requires some specific thing. For the record, states making gun owners a semi-protected class that requires specific signs and only at sensitive businesses is bullshit. Private businesses aren’t responsible to the Constitution and the state interest in protecting gun owners (who can just lock half the gun in their car) is nowhere near their interest in making sure the economy doesn’t split along racial lines.
Signs not having the force of law doesn’t make gun owners a protected class, it just puts an explicitly enumerated right on par with every other day to day activity. If you wear a fanny pack into a convenience store with a “no bags” sign you don’t go straight to jail and if you walk into a McDonalds without a shirt or shoes they have to ask you to leave before it’s the actual crime of trespassing. Guns are literally the only scenario where in some states ignoring a single sign on publicly open private property is an actual crime.