The United States Supreme Court, in its landmark Bruen decision recognizing a right to carry in public for self-defense, did not foreclose shall-issue licensing as being consistent with the Second Amendment. Yet it warned that “because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends, we do not rule out constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.”
Whether the permitting regimes of anti-gun states enacted in response to Bruen can properly be characterized as “shall-issue” remains a question of its own. Yet even where permits are now theoretically more widely available, significant barriers remain to law-abiding Americans exercising their rights. Enter the Trump administration’s U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which last week launched an historic civil rights investigation into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over unwarranted and unduly long processing delays for concealed carry permits.
This investigation follows on other efforts to address California officials’ foot-dragging over recognition of Second Amendment rights in Bruen’s wake, including a 2023 lawsuit in which a federal judge granted injunctive relief to plaintiffs subjected to an over 18-month delay in receiving a decision on their licensing applications. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced in a Department of Justice news release last Thursday that this push exemplifies a larger effort to protect Second Amendment rights and that her office could open similar investigations in “any other state or localities that insist on unduly burdening, or effectively denying, the Second Amendment rights of their ordinary, law-abiding citizens.”
The Second Amendment has always been a fundamental, individual right, a fact now confirmed by no fewer than five U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Yet anti-gun states have reliably reacted to each decisions recognizing this right by further tightening laws passed under the false premise that no individual right existed under the Second Amendment.
The Trump Administration’s use of DOJ to counteract this defiance is further proof of its commitment to Americans’ Second Amendment rights and is a welcome development in the ongoing effort to vindicate the right to keep and bear arms. For too long, the federal bureaucracy has treated the Second Amendment as a constitutional orphan. Under President Trump’s watch, as Attorney General Bondi made clear, “The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and … the Department will actively enforce the Second Amendment just like it actively enforces other fundamental constitutional rights.”
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