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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   29494 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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(EDIT: moved one section, since FCFromSSC beat me to it.)

California Closes In On A Glock Ban

AB 1127 has passed the state legislature and is going to Newsom's desk, where he's expected to sign it. While labelled as an anti-machine-gun-switch law, in practice this bans the sale or transfer of all extant Glock pistols. There's some extra irony, here, since this is the gun that Kamala Harris famously toted as evidence of her moderate bonafides, but the law still has an exemption she'd fit in, so that and a dollar won't buy you a cup of coffee these days. It's not even, alone, the broadest-impact gun ban of its kind, even if the contradiction to Heller is especially overt.

But there's an interesting background detail to the motivations background history of its advocates:

The Glock sales ban that is about to become law in California (AB 1127) was prompted by a 2022 mass shooting in Sacramento that California politicians caused through their own soft-on-crime policies. They let a violent criminal out of prison SIX YEARS early, due to Prop 57. That criminal, a prohibited person, then illegally modified a Glock he could not legally possess and used it to murder his rivals in a gang-related shooting. So now, law-abiding gun owners are going to be prevented from purchasing America’s most popular handgun.

Moros Kostas brings a pretty damning set of receipts, for those interested in the fine details, but to cut to the chase, the bill's advocates specifically pointed to a mass shooting as motivating their ban, where the only person using a modified semiautomatic had been sentenced to ten years imprisonment for serious domestic violence in 2018... only to be let out in 2022, despite further violence committed in prison. The only way California seems capable of solving this problem was a side effect of giving the man methodone; tbf, faster than California's statutory death penalty, but at the same time unlikely to be very even-handed in its application and a little too late for the victims.

That shooting, coincidentally, also occurred in Sacramento.

Yukutake and the End of Hope

In March of this year, two years after oral arguments, two judges on the Ninth Circuit held in favor of the plaintiffs in a case where :

First, plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of Hawaii Revised Statutes § 134-2(e), which provides a narrow time window (originally 10 days, and now 30 days) within which to acquire a handgun after obtaining the requisite permit. The permit application process includes a background check. Second, plaintiffs challenged § 134-3 to the extent that, as part of Hawaii’s firearms registration process, it requires a gun owner, within five days of acquiring a firearm, to physically bring the gun to a police station for inspection.

The Ninth Circuit couldn't stand for that. It's going en banc.

In theory, the increasing number of Trump appointees on the Ninth makes this a riskier bet, especially for such a pointless law. In practice, it there's been far more gun-control-friendly en banc makeups than raw statistics would consider likely, the Ninth has repeatedly flouted or outright broken its own rules in past cases, and SCOTUS has tolerated or overlooked it.

There's a fun side effect, here. Stephen Stamboulieh reports :

I will no longer take any contingency case in the 9th circuit. It’s not worth years of my life litigating, paying expenses, winning, and then getting screwed over by a court with a perfect anti-2A record.

That's not a hypothetical, and it's coming from a man who's bet and lost 400k USD on the question of whether even the 9th Circuit could manage to be this shameless. Spoiler: yes, duh. He's one of the very few people to have ever gotten an even arguable win (tactically mooted) in the 9th Circuit, on the pointy end of whether silencers are arms, and he's deciding to not be, and I can't exactly blame him.

We're a decade and a half post-Heller, and there has been one single Second Amendment win in the 9th Circuit not overturned by an en banc panel, and that's single clear victory was against a one gun a month law that only landed that far because the state's attempt to tactically moot the case took too long. And while the 9th Circuit is the worst about this, it's far from the only one.

Giambalvo Has Dropped

[T]he “Applicants” challenge the constitutionality of the following license requirements in the CCIA: (1) the “good moral character” requirement, (2) the requirement that an applicant meet with an officer in-person for an interview and submit certain information, including the identity of other adult household members, whether minor children live in their home, character references, a list of social media accounts, and other information determined to be reasonably necessary,; and (3) the requirement that an applicant complete eighteen hours of firearms training, including two hours of live-fire instruction. In addition, the Applicants and McGregor challenge the SCPD’s alleged practice of taking more than 30 days—sometimes as long as two to three years—to process the license applications. Finally, the Applicants, along with Melloni and RFI (together, the “Instructors”), challenge the SCPD’s alleged policy of arresting individuals handling firearms during the CCIA’s mandated live firearm training[...]

[W]e affirm the district court’s decision because the Applicants cannot show that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their facial Second Amendment challenges to any of the CCIA provisions, with the exception of the social media disclosure requirement[...] As to that provision, we conclude that the preliminary injunction motion is moot[...]

This is, to be fair, review of a request for a preliminary injunction. To be less charitable, it's also the most naked Bruen tantrum law on its coast, and places the entire state of New York under a regime where Bruen is a dead letter. I try to avoid using 'Kafka-esque' to describe this sorta thing, but when the police are offering that they'll arrest anyone without a carry permit while trying to get the training necessary for that permit, despite state law specifically not applying to those training environments, I've lost any better descriptor. And it's won at appeal. There's a lot of the specific logic of the decision to criticize, but it's chopping down trees and missing the forest; the Second Circuit is no more likely to find even the most expansive, pointless, and illegitimate gun control unlawful than the Ninth.

Perhaps SCOTUS will intervene, or perhaps the lower courts will take a more serious analysis of historical tradition at trial. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

Koons Has Dropped

After 22 months since oral arguments, the Third Circuit has finally filed an opinion in Koons v. Platkin:

Today, we must decide a question of immense public importance: whether it is likely that provisions of New Jersey Public Law 2022, Chapter 131, which impose certain firearms-permitting requirements and prohibit the carrying of firearms in certain “sensitive places,” passes constitutional muster...

For the most part, we agree with New Jersey and join our sister circuits that have upheld similar sensitive-places laws.

Quel surprise: New Jersey's Bruen tantrum response bill can ban carry by anyone, almost everywhere. While the court leaves a fig leaf of some small number of constraints the lower court had given -- blocking a blanket ban on carry in private vehicles, an insurance mandate, and a 'vampire rule' that required explicit permission to carry on any private property -- the overwhelming majority of the lower court's opinion is now overturned, and was never allowed to apply. For the purpose of this case, a requirement for four 'reputable' sponsors for a carry permit and a ban on carry in parks are likely to have the biggest immediate impact, but the dissent spells out exactly how broad the majority's logic goes beyond this case:

Taken together, these broad principles allow New Jersey to prohibit one from exercising the Second Amendment’s central component nearly everywhere that ordinary human action occurs, and wherever “people typically congregate.” Virtually the only places that are not “sensitive” are locations where people don’t care about assembling with others, eating and drinking, commerce, divisive opinions, amusement, recreation, education, worship, public travel, leisure, community, and where children or vulnerable people are not normally present. In such wastelands, the majority grudgingly allows, one may carry a firearm for self-defense — if he has first secured the subjective endorsement of at least four “reputable” persons.

In theory, because this is about a preliminary injunction and the appeals court put much of its emphasis on the likelihood of harm (and then declared only the most extreme types of irreparable harm would count), later hearings on the merits could focus more on whether the laws are constitutional... but the court also quite happily dove into constitutional analysis with such wonders as "some railroad banned firearms, and some states banned shooting at railroads, so the state can ban carry on all public transport".

If anything, it's as likely for future hearings by this court to only widen what New Jersey may prohibit, rather than this preliminary injunction acting as the first restriction to tighten down over time. Suffice it to say, a strong victory for @The_Nybbler's "dead on arrival".

But are they going to ban hipoints.

There is currently no Hi Point firearm that it is lawful to sell new in California. Hasn't been since January 2024.

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