California’s Ban On Guns In Public Places Takes Effect Despite Ongoing Legal Challenges

California’s new law banning firearms in most public places took effect Monday while legal challenges continue.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney, a George W. Bush appointee, blocked the law from taking effect in a Dec. 20 decision that found it to be “sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court.” But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily paused Carney’s injunction on Saturday, allowing the law to take effect beginning in 2024.

“This ruling will allow California’s common-sense gun laws to remain in place while we appeal the district court’s dangerous ruling,” Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement following the Saturday ruling.

The law, Senate Bill 2, prohibits concealed carry permit holders from bringing firearms in “sensitive places,” such as playgrounds, churches, hospitals and financial institutions.

The California Rifle and Pistol Association said in a statement Monday that the restrictions are “justified by word games intended to end run the Constitution and Bruen.”

“For many years, the right to bear arms, and so necessarily the right to self-defense, was relegated to second-class status,” Carney wrote in his Dec. 20 ruling. “But the United States Supreme Court made clear in its landmark decisions District of Columbia v. Heller, McDonald v. City of Chicago, and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Incorporated v. Bruen that relegation could no longer be permitted—individuals must be able to effectuate their right to self-defense by, if they so choose, responsibly bearing arms.”

Newsom called the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision a “perversion” when he signed the bill into law Sept. 26.