Finally Back in the Shop

 I spent a couple weeks writing rebuttals to 16 expert declarations for May v. Bonta.  A little background: California had no choice after Bruen but to go shall-issue on concealed weapon permits.  So, like other states in this conundrum, they declared a big part of the state "sensitive places," where CCWs would not be valid.  You have to pass a background check, a psychological test, and a firing test, but you cannot be trusted to not go crazy.

Bruen created this "sensitive places" test based on historic restrictions: courthouses, legislatures, and polling places.  What places did California claim fit this?  Places that serve alcohol, mass transit, schools (K-12 and universities), zoos, museums, parks, sporting events, and banks.  Mass transit like light rail, BART, city buses, Greyhound, where there are never crazy people with knives.

A common theme of these declarations is that "children might be present."  Yes, and so might mass murderers.  Children present means we put a big sign at the entrance: Vulnerable people here.

What makes this interesting is that the federal district court judge who first heard this case issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement.  This usually means she thinks it is likely to succeed on its merits at trial.  California, of course, appealed that.  The 9th Circuit Court of appeals upheld that injunction and sent it back for trial.  

That first stage is MPI (Motion for Preliminary Injunction).  They filed 14 expert declarations for that stage and in about two weeks I scrambled to write 14 rebuttals.  This was not as bad as it sounds because many cited not a single law to meet Bruen's requirement: for laws from before 1791 or at least before 1868 that regulated the activity that States want to regulate today.  These seem to have been quick money for professors who wanted to imagine that they were doing something for the cause of disarming deporables.

The State filed very slightly revised declarations by the same experts plus two more (one charging $1000/hour).  Slightly revised almost always meaning changes to their list of qualifications and accomplishments (which were often impressive, especially when scompared to their declarations).  Partly, this was because many were experts in fields far removed from weapons regulation and they seemed unfamiliar with the standards imposed by Bruen.  

Writing rebuttals to these was more laborious than challenging because most were identical except for paragraph numbers.  One exception: Patrick J. Charles had quoted a 1400  law banning any man carrying arms into churches.  My MPI rebuttal pointed out that law's title said, "No Welshman shall bear arms."  (Wales was in rebellion at the time.)  This time he left out that law.  There were still many other errors in his declaration to rebut.