The Department of Justice, under Attorney General Pam Bondi, has launched an investigation into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to determine whether the agency violates American’s gun rights via excessive fees and wait times throughout its concealed carry permitting process. The investigation, aimed at defending Californians from alleged abuse of their Second Amendment rights, was announced on Thursday, March 27, as part of an initiative sparked by President Trump’s Executive Order directing Bondi to review Second Amendment laws and infringements across the nation.

In bringing this investigation to light, the DOJ cites a legal challenge to the permitting process in which plaintiffs faced an 18-month delay in receiving concealed carry licenses from the Sheriff’s Department. Referring to California as a “particularly egregious offender” concerning its irreverence and open defiance of the United States Supreme Court’s pro-Second Amendment rulings, including the state’s newly adopted anti-gun legislation further restricting the right to bear arms, the DOJ believes there is likely to be additional cases in which Californians are “experiencing similarly long delays that are unduly burdening, or effectively denying, the Second Amendment rights of the people of Los Angeles.”

“This Department of Justice will not stand idly by while States and localities infringe on the Second Amendment rights of ordinary, law-abiding Americans… The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and under my watch, the Department will actively enforce the Second Amendment just like it actively enforces other fundamental Constitutional rights,” Bondi said in a statement about the investigation. 

Meanwhile, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department issued its own statement on Thursday amounting to not much more than “I didn’t do nuffin.”

“We are committed to processing all Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) applications in compliance with state and local laws to promote responsible gun ownership… The Department is facing a significant staffing crisis, with only 14 personnel in our CCW Unit, yet we have successfully approved 15,000 CCW applications. Currently, we are diligently working through approximately 4,000 active cases, striving to meet this unfunded mandate,” according to a statement from the department. 

Hogwash. Let’s put this into perspective. California is one of those hammer-and-sickle states that places a waiting time between purchasing and taking possession of a firearm, regardless of instant background check approval. That waiting time is ten days. So, let’s just say a criminal decides to go through the process rather than simply buying their firearm from the back of a van on 8th and Alverado. Then, let’s say he decides he’s going to carry that gun concealed to commit a violent crime when he reaches his destination. Are we really that delusional to think he is going to apply for a permit to transport the gun to his intended target?

He already has the firearm, and how much permission do you think he’ll apply for before taking innocent life? The answer is none. If an instant NICS check is enough to turn over possession of a firearm, there is no excuse for a burdensome process that takes 18 months to determine whether that individual has the right to carry it. In fact, there is no excuse for a permitting process that takes longer than the background check itself. 

I’d categorize training as a necessity to defend life effectively with lethal force, but that’s not where the months are spent. If the Sheriff’s Department’s claims are correct, the state’s processing requirements are too burdensome and arbitrarily time-consuming, unduly depriving the Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of self-preservation. That is not the citizen’s fault and must not be the individual’s responsibility to wait, but the state’s burden to speed up the process. There was once an idea that the government existed first to defend its people’s liberty. I’m not sure when that changed to government knows best, and what you need are fewer rights. 

Speaking of the types of people driving such an ugly transition to authoritarianism, Jacob Charles, associate professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and self-proclaimed expert on the Second Amendment, says he has not seen this type of DOJ probe before, classified as a pattern-or-practice investigation and typically focussed on police misconduct. Charles, another leftist who has lost any grasp of history, reality, and the Constitution, instead blames the Trump administration, calling the investigation “another culture war issue pitting red versus blue” while completely dismissing the daily attacks conservatives and gun owners face from the left.

“This has to be seen in the context of Trump attacking law firms, universities, and cities, counties and states who don’t profess fealty to him personally and to his vision… He’s not even pretending to be a president for all of America,” Charles said, likely with a straight face earned only through years of mainlining delusion. 

Another self-proclaimed expert on the Second Amendment, University of Chicago law professor Darrell A.H. Miller, claims the investigation is a reversal for Republicans, who have previously spoken out against other pattern-and-practice investigations into problematic police departments conducted by civil rights attorneys at the DOJ.

“Republicans in particular extolled a lot of belief in local control and states’ rights,” but for the 2nd Amendment, “those priorities get reversed,”

Stop conflating issues, you petulant dolt. Conservatives may not have been fans of idiotic attempts to create classes of people protected from the consequences of their actions, nor are we fans of defunding the police or kowtowing to angry mobs who demand every police action against a member of their community is driven by racism. Additionally, the issue of the Second Amendment is not one of “states’ rights,” no matter how much you want to cry about it. It is a Constitutionally protected right at the federal level, which grants no right to subversion by the state. 

Chuck Michel, the president of the California Rifle and Pistol Association, welcomed the investigation and took a pat on the back, telling The Times he believes it comes as a result of his group’s lawsuit challenging the matter. He also opined on violations in jurisdictions outside of Los Angeles County, as excessive fees and wait times indicate a pattern of behavior and a strategy rather than an isolated case of understaffing.

“I think the reason the DOJ is getting involved in this particular jurisdiction is because of the things we uncovered in this lawsuit… The primary issues that we are now facing from somewhat recalcitrant jurisdictions is excessive fees to go through an application process and excessive wait times to try to get a license — and wait times that exceed the state 120-day limit, some going out to 18 months or two years,” Michel said.

Bondi says she hopes the announcement will encourage other localities to “voluntarily embrace their duty to protect Second Amendment rights” but warns that if it isn’t the case, this investigation will be one of many that could spread nationwide. 

Although the Supreme Court has suggested that “onerous” gun-permitting processes may be beyond the scope of Constitutionality, they have successfully kicked that can down the road for future taxpayer-funded litigation, as they do, by not delineating the amount of time or a prohibitive level of expense that should be adhered to. Well, perhaps the ATF should issue a rule. They are the regulatory body under the DOJ, and they seem to have had no qualms issuing them in the past under penalty of imprisonment against American citizens. Pam, if you’re listening…