DOJ vs LA Sheriff

SCOPE had previously reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi had announced the formation of a Department of Justice (DOJ) “Second Amendment Enforcement Task Force.” Bondi noted, “For too long, the Second Amendment, which establishes the fundamental individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms, has been treated like a second-class right. No more. It is the policy of this Department of Justice to use its full might to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”

In the Task Force’s first high-profile move, the DOJ filed a federal lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, alleging deliberate delaying tactics by the Sheriff’s Department in processing applications for California concealed carry licenses.

The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Some quotes from the complaint:

“…Between January 2024 and March 2025, Defendants received 3,982 applications for new concealed carry licenses. Of these, they approved exactly two…This is not bureaucratic inefficiency; it is systematic obstruction of constitutional rights.”

“The mechanics of this obstruction are equally damning. Defendants force applicants to wait an average of 281 days—over nine months—just to begin processing their applications, with some waiting as long as 1,030 days (nearly three years). The median delay is 372 days. These delays far exceed California’s own statutory requirement that licensing authorities provide initial determinations within 90 days, demonstrating Defendants’ flagrant disregard for both state law and constitutional obligations.”

“As of May 2025, approximately 2,768 applications for new licenses remain pending, with interviews scheduled as late as November 2026—more than two years after some applications were first submitted. Numerous applicants simply gave up and withdrew their applications, often after waiting months in Defendants’ deliberately stalled process. These are not abstract statistics; they represent thousands of law-abiding citizens who have been stripped of their constitutional right to self-defense outside their homes.”

“…Defendants have constructed an administrative labyrinth designed to frustrate and ultimately deny this fundamental right to virtually all who seek to exercise it.”

It appears that Bondi’s DOJ is serious in defending 2A rights. 

As SCOPE previously wrote, the significance of this is that citizens will not have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars suing the LA Sheriff’s office but, instead, we have the federal government using its resources to right an obvious wrong about a fundamental right.

Unfortunately, similar practices in Democrat run states make this a huge problem and will require huge resources to counteract these unconstitutional practices.