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Everytown For Gun Safety Applauds Federal Court for Upholding California’s Sensible Public Carry Gun Laws

5.11.2018

NEW YORK – Everytown for Gun Safety, the country’s largest gun violence prevention organization, today applauded the opinon from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California upholding California public carry gun laws challenged in Flanagan v. Becerra, a case backed by the National Rifle Association. In a decision this week, the court found that the California state legislature was reasonable in believing its open carry restrictions would be effective in “promoting and achieving the important governmental objective of public safety.”

Everytown previously filed an amicus brief in the case, available here, which drew on Everytown’s extensive research into the history of firearms laws and showed California’s public carry system is consistent with hundreds of years of English and American weapons regulation.

STATEMENT FROM ERIC TIRSCHWELL, LITIGATION DIRECTOR FOR EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY:

“This is yet another decision reaffirming that there is no conflict between reasonable gun safety laws and the Second Amendment.”

Description of case:

Flanagan v. Becerra is a challenge to California’s system of regulating the carrying of firearms in public, which people can do in either an open or concealed manner. California law currently allows for the issuance of concealed carry permits to those with “good cause” and prohibits the open carrying of firearms in populated areas, while allowing open carry with a license in rural counties and without a license in unpopulated areas.

California’s system was challenged by several plaintiffs organized by the California Rifle and Pistol Association, the National Rifle Association’s California affiliate. The challenge is meant to answer the questions left open by the Ninth Circuit’s en banc decision in Peruta v. County of San Diego, which found California’s concealed carry licensing system, as implemented by San Diego County, does not raise a Second Amendment issue because there is no right to carry concealed weapons.

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