The Justice Department said it was investigating whether the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had violated the Second Amendment rights of residents through what it said was a pattern of long delays in issuing concealed carry permits.
The department said the investigation, announced in a news release on Thursday, was part of a larger push to protect gun rights across the United States. It added that it could open similar investigations in “any other states or localities that insist on unduly burdening, or effectively denying, the Second Amendment rights of their ordinary, law-abiding citizens.”
The Supreme Court has upheld Second Amendment rights in recent years, but, the Justice Department wrote in the announcement, some states “have resisted this recent pro-Second Amendment case law.”
The department called California “a particularly egregious offender,” saying it had passed laws restricting the right to bear arms. It said some areas of California had also imposed excessive fees and lengthy wait times on concealed carry permits.
The investigation follows a lawsuit filed in federal court in 2023 by gun rights advocates who claimed it had taken more than a year to obtain a concealed carry permit from the Los Angeles County Sheriff. Last year, a federal judge agreed that the Second Amendment rights of two individuals in the lawsuit had most likely been violated when the county made them wait 18 months before they received a decision on their permits. The Justice Department said it believed others had also experienced long delays in obtaining permits in the county.
The Sheriff’s Department wrote in a statement that it respected the Second Amendment and that it was committed to processing all concealed carry permits, but it added that it was facing a “staffing crisis” and had a backlog of cases. It said it had around 4,000 applications to process, with only 14 people to review them.
Last month, President Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to assess “any ongoing infringements” on Second Amendment rights in federal agencies across the country.
“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Ms. Bondi wrote in the news release announcing the investigation in Los Angeles, “and under my watch, the department will actively enforce the Second Amendment just like it actively enforces other fundamental constitutional rights.”
