You’ve heard it before, probably here — the only place a gun belongs is on your hip or locked in a safe. Good advice, that. But the city of San Francisco has elevated a good practice into a law and now, in their ruling in Jackson v. The City of San Francisco, the Ninth Circuit court of appeals has upheld its constitutionality. As the court acknowledged, “This indirectly burdens the ability to use a handgun, because it requires retrieving a weapon from a locked safe or removing a trigger lock.” . . .
But because it burdens only the “manner in which persons may exercise their Second Amendment rights,” the regulation more closely resembles a content-neutral speech restriction that regulates only the time, place, or manner of speech. The record indicates that a modern gun safe may be opened quickly.
So yes, the law limits citizens’ Second Amendment freedoms, but it’s OK since modern gun safes can be opened relatively quickly. As the court sees it, that’s a small burden given the city’s interest in preventing potentially bad outcomes:
Jackson contends that section 4512 is over-inclusive because it applies even when the risk of unauthorized access by children or others is low, such as when a handgun owner lives alone. We reject this argument, because San Francisco has asserted important interests that are broader than preventing children or unauthorized users from using the firearms, including an interest in preventing firearms from being stolen and in reducing the number of handgun-related suicides and deadly domestic violence incidents.
They also upheld the ban on the sale of hollow points within city limits, although San Franciscans are free to own them and use them as long as they come by them elsewhere. So the Ninth Circus giveth and they taketh away. They’ve advanced the cause of concealed carry with their Peruta decision, but are fine with criminalizing those who keep a pistol on their nightstand while they snooze. Such is life in the 2A-challenged utopia of California.