The Trump administration Justice Department is suing the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over the review of concealed-carry permit applications, citing a “deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay that renders this constitutional right meaningless in practice.”

The federal government is suing the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department because of its “deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay that renders this constitutional right meaningless in practice.”

This follows our own pending lawsuit of CRPA v. LASD, which covers the same… pic.twitter.com/zUUAW5nbtM

— SAF (@2AFDN) September 30, 2025

The Second Amendment Foundation post continues:

This follows our own pending lawsuit of CRPA v. LASD, which covers the same issue and won a preliminary injunction, though that injunction was limited to the named plaintiffs in the case only. A thread on the complaint!

A Fox News report has more details:

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) and Sheriff Robert Luna on Tuesday, accusing it of “systematically” delaying concealed carry permits for law-abiding citizens in violation of the Second Amendment.

The lawsuit, which the DOJ touts as its first-ever affirmative lawsuit in support of gun owners, alleges the LASD created a “pattern and practice” of obstruction by forcing law-abiding citizens to wait months and even years for a decision. 

The DOJ said in their complaint that, between January 2024 and March 2025, the sheriff’s office received 3,982 new applications for concealed carry permits and, as of May 8, approved only two. As of that date, two of the remaining applications were denied, 1,210 “were withdrawn for various reasons” and “approximately 2,768 applications for a new license to carry a concealed firearm remained pending.”

This seems a clear attempt to interfere with the residents’ rights under the Second Amendment. A right delayed is a right denied, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department seems determined to delay any concealed-carry permit applications as long as possible, in some cases as long as two years from application to interview.

Los Angeles County and indeed California as a whole are bucking the current trend in this issue. As of this writing, 29 of the 50 states are “constitutional carry” states, where residents may carry a handgun without any permit or permission slip from the state or local government. Those states include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Note that these are predominantly Republican-controlled states, which should come as no surprise.

Amazingly, those states have not devolved into dystopian hellscapes with bullet-riddled bodies on every street corner. No, that would be Chicago.