California desperately needs shall-issue, but your chance of getting it is virtually nil.

Strictly speaking, they can't simply refuse to process them. See Salyut v. Pitchess, a California Court of Appeals decision from about 1976. The issuing agency is required to at least go through the motions of processing the application before they turn you down.

The more I think about this, the more of a mistake it is. Until we get the Court to:

1. Rule the Second Amendment is an individual right.

2. Rule that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment against the states.

This will just give you another bad precedent.

... your chance of getting it is virtually nil.

For one thing, your state constitution contains no right-to-bear-arms provision. In places like Wisconsin, the provision they do have (very recently added, too) was pivotal in the state supreme court ruling that citizens must be furnished some way to exercise that freedom, such that if concealed carry were banned by statute then open carry must be legal.

You guys are great at initiatives (great at running them, not necessarily great at passing the ones that should be [vide 98 and 99]); can you amend your constitution via that route?

The California Constitution, Art. I, has a declaration of a right to defend life, liberty, and property. But no right to be armed when doing so. (Sort of like the right to freedom of the press, but no right to own a printing press.) This is because the California Constitutional Convention of 1849 was dominated by Iowans, and the Iowa Constitution was remarkable in its period for not having an RKBA. The current California Constitution of 1879 largely followed the 1849 Constitution in its rights guarantees.

The chances of getting a constitutional initiative passed to add a RKBA to the California Constitution is about zero. Even if you got it passed, the California Supreme Court would probably find that it violated the right to live in a separate reality and void it before it got to the voters.

Can you open carry? Then do that! It sounds like the ordinance is on the books in Torrance BUT that the local yokels will not uphold the law as it exists. And THAT is wrong. I hope the lawsuit goes through and that the man prevails in forcing the point.

Remember, when seconds count it will take the police minutes to get there, if they come at all. Why do I carry? Because a cop is too heavy! All them donuts, you know.

WRT CA:

IANAL and this is not legal advice, but I try to stay informed. Open carry will get you a lot of the wrong sort of attention in most places, whether the black letter law says so or not. Loaded firearm in a public place is a no-no in most populated areas.

I tend to agree with Mr Cramer that now is not a good time to be filing a suit, even though Salute vs Pitchess applies. That said, I wish the plaintiff all the luck in the world.

Open carry is legal for all gun owners in Virginia, and I've frequently carried openly in restaurants and other places where concealed carry is restricted. Open carry in a restaurant and practically no one even notices. Not even in Northern Virginia, which is about as urban as any place in the country. I've open carried in a restaurant in the Ballston Metro Station, without a second look. If no one ever does it, the acceptance diminishes to zero, as our gun club once found out in Reston. But when we carried in a local restaurant there the police got an education about commonwealth history and citizen rights. Everyone went home better informed.

I don't think I'd advocate open carry in the heart of Philadelphia, or Trenton, NJ... but I would like to see the effect of a concealed carry law in that environment. My guess is that it would have a suppressive effect on crime, if a decent number of oldsters applied for and received permits. Couple that with some opportunity-enhancing socio-economic policies, and I'll bet the murder wave in Philly would take a dive.

The trick would be to find any public official willing to put their career on the line by advocating such a policy.

Philadelphia is subject to PA's fairly standard shall-issue permit system, isn't it? (Despite frequent attempts by TPTB there to get around it somehow.)

Kirk:

You're right. I just assumed that the laws would be similar to those in New Jersey.

I hate to say it, but if Philly is an example then CCW doesn't have a very suppressive effect on crime. (At least not to a noticeable extent.) I was wrong about that. I should have known, since the main causes of crime have to do with family dissolution, and concealed carry doesn't do anything about that. It does allow people to protect themselves, but it's not a panacea.

Thankfully, NJ is in a distinct, sad minority when it comes to firearms law.

As to suppressive effects on crime, the studies show very mixed and modest results, as the recent CDC meta-study showed. My objection to any kind of strict gun control is that it represents the forceable disarming of innocent victims; how immoral is that?

Open carry of loaded firearms in cities has been unlawful since 1967. Open carry of unloaded firearms would probably get you shot for resisting arrest (whether you were or not). A friend was moving some years ago in Redondo Beach (not far from Torrance), and he had a shotgun, with the action locked open. He was carrying it along with a stack of clothes and boxes from his car. A police officer actually pointed his gun at my friend and kept it pointed at him the entire time that they talked.