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.
Fun Fact, if you ignore the No Guns sign the first thing that happens is you get asked to leave.
And again, private companies are not responsible to the Constitution. You do not have Constitutional rights in the court of Walmart.
So yes, requiring specific signs and telling some businesses they don’t qualify for signs is absolutely creating a semi-protected class. You are telling some private businesses they cannot refuse you service for carrying a gun, just like they couldn’t do so for you being black.
That’s not what this law says. This law says that if there isn’t a sign specifically permitting guns you leave in handcuffs on first contact without first being asked. Being asked to leave and refusing to being charged as trespassing is what is referred to as “signs not having the force of law” and is the default “protected class” scenario you’re talking about. In states that have stricter laws where signs have the force of law it is a crime even if they don’t ask you to leave.
I’m not talking about California’s law. I’m talking about states that require a sign to turn away people carrying, like Arizona. I think I’ve made that very clear by now.
So you’re saying that there should be no gun owner exception to private property and it should be just like everything else where if you’re asked to leave and refuse it’s trespassing but a sign alone doesn’t make it a crime without a specific request from the property owner? Got it.