Judge Issues Preliminary Injunction Against California Gun Show Ban

United States District Court Judge John W. Holcomb issued a preliminary injunction against California’s gun show ban on Monday.

The plaintiffs in the case include the Second Amendment Foundation, California Rifle & Pistol Association, the Asian Pacific Americans Gun Owners Association, B & L Productions/Crossroads of the West, Gerald Clark, Eric Johnson, and Chad Littrell.

The lawsuit targeted two statutes, SB 264 and SB 915, which effectively ban gun shows at the Orange County Fairgrounds and, more broadly, state-owned land.

Plaintiffs argued that “the statutes at issue infringe both their First Amendment freedom-of-speech rights in a public forum and their Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms.”

Holcomb agreed with the plaintiffs’ First Amendment claims, noting:

Here, the Court finds sufficient evidence that SB 264 and SB 915 have a viewpoint-discriminatory purpose. Legislative history shows that the goal of the two statutes is to end gun shows in California, and, while the opinions and statements of legislators are not dispositive of viewpoint discrimination…those statements are circumstantial evidence that the statutes disfavor the lawful commercial speech of firearm vendors.

After testing SB 264 and SB 915 by the Supreme Court of the United States’ Bruen (2022), Holcomb also sided with plaintiffs regarding their Second Amendment claims. He focused on the historical test associated with Bruen and observed, “Defendants are unable to identify a historical analog to SB 264 or SB 915. ”

Holcomb granted the plaintiffs motion for a preliminary injunction and ordered that available dates of usage for the Orange Country Fairgrounds be presented to Crossroads of the West “to reserve dates for gun show events (and to hold such events)…[like] any other event promoter who has previously held events at the Orange County Fairgrounds.”

The case is B & L Productions v. Newsom, No. 8:22-cv-01518 in the United State District Court for the Central District of California.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com