CA Lawyer Can't Name One CCW Holder—9th Circuit Smells Blood

Judge Nelson asked state attorney Samuel Harbert a simple question: how many concealed carry licenses has California actually issued?

Harbert's answer: *"I'm not sure, Your Honor."*

**That's it. That's the ballgame.**

California's entire defense of its open carry ban rests on one pillar—residents still have access to licensed concealed carry, so banning open carry doesn't strip them of their Second Amendment rights. Their own attorney just admitted, under oath, before the full en banc Ninth Circuit, that he can't confirm that option exists for anyone.

Mark Baird is challenging California Penal Code sections 25850 and 26350—the statutes that criminalize open carry statewide. A three-judge 9th Circuit panel already ruled the ban unconstitutional in densely populated counties. California sprinted to the full court to bury that ruling.

It may have just dug the grave deeper.

Baird's attorney Amy Bellantoni went straight for the constitutional throat: these statutes "criminalize presumptively protected conduct" under the Second Amendment. Under *Bruen*, that ends the analysis. California must produce historical analogues for an outright open carry ban—and it has none. Zero. The tradition doesn't exist because the ban never existed at founding.

Harbert tried the "manner of carry" dodge—arguing *Bruen* only bars states from eliminating *all* public carry, not from dictating *how* you carry it. California points to its shall-issue CCW system as living proof that public carry still exists in the state.

**It doesn't. A permission slip you beg a sheriff to grant is not a constitutional right. It's a licensed privilege—and one the state's own lawyer can't prove reaches any meaningful number of Californians.**

The court also pressed Bellantoni on whether Baird's challenge is facial or as-applied. Her answer was clean: this targets the criminal statutes as applied to open carry across the board. Not one rogue sheriff. Not one denied applicant. The whole law, everywhere, for everyone.

The en banc Ninth Circuit has spent decades engineering creative workarounds to keep California's gun restrictions alive. But *Bruen* doesn't leave creative room. Text, history, and tradition is the test—and "just get a CCW" died in real time the moment California's own attorney couldn't tell the court how many Californians that option even reaches.

Watch this one closely. If the en banc panel reverses the three-judge ruling and reinstates the open carry ban, this goes to SCOTUS—and after that exchange, **it should go fast.**