The State of California and the National Rifle Association find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Both oppose the Second Amendment right to openly carry a firearm in public (Open Carry[1]) for the purpose of self-defense. Both want to limit the carrying of firearms in public for the purpose of self-defense to those who have a government issued, concealed carry permission slip.
Origin of NRA Open Carry Opposition
Before I go any further, I want to take this opportunity to point out where the NRA’s position that the government can ban Open Carry in favor of concealed carry originated.
In 2009, a year after the US Supreme Court published its first, in-depth, analysis of the Second Amendment which held that Open Carry is the right guaranteed by the Constitution and which held that the 19th century prohibitions on concealed carry are constitutional, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh published a law review article which argued in support of bans on Open Carry in favor of concealed carry.
However, in his article he also said that his personal support of concealed carry conflicts with 150 years of American precedents. Professor Volokh also wrote, in the same article:
“And if the Second Amendment is incorporated via the Fourteenth Amendment, its scope as against the states might well be properly defined with an eye towards how the right to bear arms was understood in 1868, when the concealed-carry exception was apparently firmly established.”
The following year, 2010, the US Supreme Court incorporated the Second Amendment against the states via the 14th Amendment. Whatever slim argument one might have made that there was some right to carry concealed in 1791, when the Second Amendment was enacted, became irrelevant as
