One mistake made in Bruen was allowing for sensitive places.

Oh, I get the argument, that there are some places where the government's interest in keeping guns out is so great, etc. I just disagree with it, and part of the reason I disagree with it lies in the fact that if it were just courthouses, we could probably deal with it, but too many people were going to see how far they could push it.

And they did.

Before the ink was even dry on Bruen, several states passed laws making as many places as they could manage "sensitive."

Yes, California was one of them, in a move that shocked literally no one. And they got sued for it, too. That yielded them a partial victory in a situation that was about as good as it was going to get for them. Now, the Second Amendment Foundation announced in a press release that it wants an en banc rehearing of the case.

Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in a case challenging California’s “sensitive places” statute have filed a petition for an en banc rehearing before the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case is known as May v. Bonta.

SAF is joined by Gun Owners of America, the Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of California, Liberal Gun Club, California Rifle & Pistol Association and several individuals including Reno May, for whom the case is named. They are represented by attorneys C.D. Michel, Joshua Robert Dale, Alexander A. Frank and Konstadinos T. Moros at Michel & Associates in Long Beach, Calif., and Donald Kilmer of Caldwell, Idaho.

A three-judge panel recently affirmed an injunction against the state’s restrictions “with respect to hospitals and similar medical facilities, public transit, gatherings that require a permit, places of worship, financial institutions, parking areas and similar areas connected to those places, and the new default rule as to private property.” But it was only a partial victory, and it narrowed the sweeping injunction issued earlier by the district court.

“As we note in our petition,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “the Ninth Circuit Court has never hesitated to grant en banc review in order to uphold a gun control law, so it should grant review in this case to uphold the general right to public carry as affirmed by the Supreme Court in the Bruen decision.”

“Our initial victory was upheld in part by the Ninth Circuit panel,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “We are now asking the court to fix the panel’s errors as to the provisions of the law which were upheld by reversing the district court’s injunction.”

Of course, Gottlieb is absolutely correct about how the Ninth Circuit grants en banc reviews for every gun control law that an individual judge overturns, so fair is fair.

However, I won't be surprised to see them deny this one. We know that most of the judges on the Ninth Circuit have no interest in fairness, especially on the issue of guns.

I don't think the results would be particularly different, but that's neither here nor there. This is just a step on the road to the Supreme Court.

See, it's probable that the Court will need to clarify what a sensitive place can and should be. After Rahimi, it's unlikely it'll be quite as limiting as we might prefer, but it would also be a lot more limiting than California would like.

Following Bruen, lawmakers in anti-gun states understood they couldn't declare entire cities as sensitive places, so they just made so many individual locations "sensitive" that it basically became an issue to try and carry a gun and do anything at all. They're meeting the letter of the decision, but definitely not the spirit. So, the Court will need to adjust.

This is just a step in making that happen, and I hope it does.