FPC to California AG: Revoke Your “Good Moral Character” Legal Alert and Comply with Bruen Before We Sue

FPC to California AG: Revoke Your “Good Moral Character” Legal Alert and Comply with Bruen Before We Sue​

SACRAMENTO, CA (June 30, 2022) – Last night, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta informing him that if local concealed-carry issuing agencies use the state’s so-called “good moral character” requirement in the way he recently called for in response to NYSRPA v. Bruen, it will cause them “to defend far more Second Amendment claims than they have ever faced.” The letter can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.

“Conditioning a carry license on a discretionary evaluation of an applicant’s ‘good moral character’ is patently inconsistent with Bruen’s repeated statements that the carry right may not be denied by non-objective criteria applied by a local government official,” says the letter by attorney Bradly Benbrook of Benbrook Law Group. “Bruen considered and rejected New York’s ‘proper cause’ requirement for a carry license, but it left no doubt that it was the discretionary aspect of the licensing regime—requiring citizens to convince a government official that they deserved a license based on their circumstances—that fell outside the historical tradition of permissible firearm regulation.”