In the Heller and Bruen decisions, the Supreme Court made abundantly clear the Second Amendment acknowledges and secures, but does not create, an unalienable, individual right that is in force wherever Americans happen to be. States must provide the option of open or concealed carry—both are permissible—and may not simply declare everywhere a “sensitive area” where guns may be banned.
To no one’s surprise, Democrats disagree. They’re not at all fond of the Constitution, which very much gets in the way of their political desires. The Second Amendment is particularly infuriating to them because unless they can disarm Americans, their socialist/communist utopia can never be realized. Their concern isn’t social welfare, it’s total social control.
So, since Heller (2008), the usual Democrat suspects have either ignored the Court, or done everything they could to make it difficult, even impossible, for Americans to exercise their fundamental, natural right to self-defense. Until the second Trump Administration, they largely got away with that. They spent untold millions of taxpayer dollars defending lawsuits with arguments they knew they would lose, but they got to harass and discourage Americans and even got to jail some of them. After every loss, they doubled down and instituted another delaying, harassing tactic.
But the Trump/Bondi DOJ is finally defending American’s fundamental rights:
Graphic: X Post
“The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has systematically denied thousands of law-abiding Californians their fundamental Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home—not through outright refusal, but through a deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay that renders this constitutional right meaningless in practice,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims the county forces citizens to wait 281 days, over nine months, “to begin processing their applications, with some waiting as long as 1,030 days (nearly three years).”
“These delays far exceed California’s own statutory requirement that licensing authorities provide initial determinations within 90 days, demonstrating Defendants’ flagrant disregard for both state law and constitutional obligations,” the lawsuit adds.
This is common in blue states. Not only do they charge outrageous fees, unnecessary and expensive training without making that training easily, or at all, available is commonly required. Slow-rolling license processing while making the process as expensive and difficult as possible is another common tactic. The LACSO, however, is taking slow-rolling to a new level of obfuscation:
The division discovered “[A]s of May 2025, approximately 2,768 applications for new licenses remain pending, with interviews scheduled as late as November 2026—more than two years after some applications were first submitted. Numerous applicants simply gave up and withdrew their applications, often after waiting months in Defendants’ deliberately stalled process.”
During that time, the stats show the county issued two licenses and denied two.
The Supreme Court’s decisions, to the red-faced, spittle-flinging rage of Democrats, invalidated “may issue” licenses. Unless a citizen is lawfully prohibited from gun ownership by felony conviction or other narrowly defined issues, the states must—“shall issue”--issue a license. Los Angeles and other blue jurisdictions try to get around this by claiming a lack the manpower to process applications, or by arbitrarily denying them. Such denial begins another essentially eternal process of appeal by the same people who denied the application in the first place.
Among the great ironies of contemporary law enforcement is blue jurisdictions, which harass and defund their law enforcement agencies, which makes recruiting capable, honest police officers and support employees difficult, may be right about that lack of manpower. However, agencies with processing mandates under law have an obligation to obey those laws, and their political masters have an obligation to fund those positions. Of course, they might also streamline the application process—when pigs fly.
These purposeful evasions and violations of the law are designed to do exactly what the DOJ suit alleges: force citizens to withdraw their applications in disgust. We have no idea how many carry concealed anyway, though the numbers are likely small. Normal Americans, particularly those applying for concealed carry licenses, are uncommonly law-abiding, unlike agencies like the LACSO. They also know if caught carrying without a license, their police and judges will be only too happy to put them in prison.
Constitutional carry is currently the law in 29 states. California is obviously not among them. Blue states like California want absolute control over their citizens, which is causing many of them to flee to free states.
At least we now have the DOJ actively working to uphold American’s fundamental, unalienable rights, including the right to self-defense. That’s been a long time coming.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.