“A federal appeals court upheld California’s 10-day waiting period and background check for existing gun owners and those with concealed-weapons permits, ruling that it did not violate the Second Amendment,” sfchronicle.com reports. “The safety precautions were reasonable, the three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit United States Court of Appeals said in a statement, reversing a decision by a lower court that had ruled requirements unconstitutional.”
Reasonable. I don’t think that word means what that the Ninth Circuit thinks it means. Wants it to mean. Needs it to mean. You can thank the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller decision for opening the “reasonable regulations” loophole; a caveat large enough for California’s top court’s to drive a constitutional infringement through. An infringement based on the idea that a right delayed is a public saved. Like this:
The state already requires a waiting period to check of a purchaser’s criminal and mental health records, and a 10-day waiting period for first-time gun buyers. A waiting period for existing gun owners is reasonable, Judge Mary Schroeder said Wednesday.
“An individual who already owns a hunting rifle, for example, may want to purchase a larger capacity weapon that will do more damage when fired into a crowd,” Schroeder said. “A 10-day cooling-off period would serve to discourage such conduct.” . . .
Schroeder argued that the waiting period had little effect on existing gun owners, noting that before the age of superstores, most people wanting guns had to wait before purchasing one.
With president-elect Trump’s pledge to appoint a strict Constitutionalist to the Supreme Court, shifting the balance of power in that direction, there’s hope that the Court will close the Heller loophole. Meanwhile, Californians and the millions of citizens under the Ninth Circuit’s purview continue to suffer from judicial activism on what is the clearest of Constitutional rights.