LA Sheriff Agrees to Fix Concealed Carry Permit Backlog After DOJ Lawsuit

It took a federal lawsuit to get the LA County Sheriff's Department to process concealed carry applications like the Second Amendment actually applies in Los Angeles. That's the part worth sitting with. This isn't a dispute over some obscure statute. Bruen made clear that "may issue" discretion can't be used as a backdoor way to deny law-abiding citizens their right to carry. LA's backlog wasn't an accident of bureaucracy so much as a feature of a system that never wanted to comply in the first place.

The settlement itself is almost beside the point. Of course the DOJ was going to win this one. What's telling is how long it took and how much pressure was required to get a county sheriff's office to simply follow the law. Applicants waited months, sometimes years, for permits they were legally entitled to receive, while the department dragged its feet and hoped nobody with standing would notice. Somebody did.

We'd like to say this is an isolated case, but anyone who's watched "may issue" jurisdictions operate knows the pattern. Slow-walk the applications, bury people in paperwork, let the backlog do the work that an outright denial legally can't. It's a workaround, not an oversight, and it only stops when somebody with subpoena power shows up.

Fixing the backlog is good news for the residents who've been stuck waiting. But the real fix isn't a consent decree that some future administration can quietly ignore once the cameras move on. It's actual enforcement, sustained over years, making sure LA County treats a constitutional right like one instead of a favor it doles out when convenient.