A federal judge in California’s Orange County has blocked the state from enforcing its prohibition on gun shows held on public properties, including county fairgrounds.
In his opinion handed down on Monday, U.S. District Judge John Holcomb sided with a coalition of Second Amendment advocacy groups and gun show proprietors, temporarily blocking the enforcement of two California laws aimed to further restrict gun shows that are already highly regulated across the state.
The two laws were written by state Sen. Dave Min, a Democrat representing parts of Orange County. The first, Senate Bill 264, bans the sale of firearms or ammunition on Orange County Fairgrounds. The second law, Senate Bill 915, prohibits such sales on state lands, including county fairgrounds.
Mr. Min, a former law professor at the University of California–Irvine, has argued that his bills would make California a safer place by closing what he called the “gun show loophole” and ending “ghost gun” sales, straw purchases, and gun thefts from careless vendors. Judge Holcomb, however, said those regulations are going too far.
“Even if the Court were to conclude that banning lawful firearm sales at the Orange County Fairgrounds directly advances California’s interest in stopping illegal weapon sales, the regulation would still be more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest,” wrote Judge Holcomb, who was appointed by President Donald Trump.
Supreme Court Ruling on Guns
In a landmark Second Amendment ruling in June 2022, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that gun laws can only be deemed constitutional when they are “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition.” Citing this legal standard, Judge Holcomb said that California failed to show evidence that the two challenged laws have any parallel from the time of the Second Amendment’s framing.
“No law that Defendants cite permitted the state arbitrarily to ban firearm sales in disfavored forums, nor did those laws discriminate between gun vendors based upon whether the sales took place on public or private land,” he wrote.
In their complaint, the plaintiffs challenged the California laws on both First and Second Amendment grounds, claiming that the state has engaged in viewpoint discrimination against gun owners.
Specifically, they argued that a gun show is more than just a place where people trade guns, but also a public forum that allows gun owners to meet and discuss topics such as hunting, target practice, gunsmithing, and political advocacy. By shutting down gun shows, they said, the California government is denying gun owners a forum to exercise free speech.
Judge Holcomb agreed, saying that the laws have “a viewpoint-discriminatory purpose,” and that they “disfavor the lawful commercial speech of firearm vendors.”
Alan Gottlieb, the founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, a leading plaintiff in the lawsuit, celebrated the ruling as “a huge victory for both the First and Second Amendments.”
“We believe the court has sent a clear message to the State of California, Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta that the Constitution trumps their personal animus toward gun owners and the Second Amendment,” Mr. Gottlieb said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
Meanwhile, Mr. Min on Monday condemned the ruling as “the very essence of federal overreach” motivated by partisan politics.
“Today’s injunction, issued by a Trump-appointed activist judge, is an outrageous abuse of judicial authority that will undoubtedly make our communities less safe,” he wrote in a statement posted online.
“I am confident this decision will be reversed on appeal, and pray this totally unwarranted injunction does not lead to the deaths of more innocent gun violence victims in the interim,” the state senator added.
