Oct. 1 (UPI) — The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, accusing it of denying residents their right to bear arms by deliberately stalling their concealed carry license application process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lawsuit<\/a> was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, arguing that the sheriff’s office was violating the Second Amendment rights of those seeking a concealed carry license “through a deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay that renders this constitutional right meaningless in practice.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Justice Department said it was its first-ever affirmative lawsuit in support of gun owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Second Amendment protects the fundamental constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms. Los Angeles County may not like that right, but the Constitution does not allow them to infringe upon it,” Attorney General Pam Bondi<\/a> said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to California\u2002state law<\/a>, a person who wishes to carry a concealed weapon in public must obtain a carry a concealed carry weapon license, which must be issued by a county sheriff, police chief or other head of a municipal police department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Justice Department lawsuit states that between January and March, the sheriff’s department received 3,982 applications for a new carry concealed weapon license, of which only two licenses have been issued and two licenses have been denied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About 2,768 of those applications remained pending as of May 8, federal prosecutors said, adding that the remaining 1,210 applications were withdrawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of those pending applications, interviews have been scheduled for as late as November 2026, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lawsuit continued that under state requirements it had to make an initial determination within 90 days, but the sheriff’s office allegedly had applicants wait an average of 281 days to begin processing their applications, with some waiting nearly three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Defendants have constructed an administrative labyrinth designed to frustrate and ultimately deny this fundamental right to virtually all who seek to exercise it,” the lawsuit states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “This case concerns more than administrative delays — it addresses a coordinated effort by Defendants to nullify through bureaucratic obstruction what they cannot deny through law. When constitutional rights are deliberately delayed beyond any reasonable timeframe, they are effectively denied.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n