Getting a concealed-carry permit in Los Angeles County is a hundred times less likely than it was for Angels legend Nolan Ryan to win a game without allowing any hits. A new lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice could change that.
Ryan was celestial on the mound. He won 324 games – seven of them no-hitters. (Four of those were with the Angels.) That means opponents did not get a hit in two out of every hundred games he won. No wonder he ascended into baseball heaven, inducted into the Hall of Fame with the third-highest vote percentage ever.
Unbelievably, Angelenos who try to get permission to exercise their Second Amendment rights face even longer odds than did Ryan in getting a no-hit win. As a lawsuit by the federal government details, just one in 2,000 concealed-carry permit applicants wins the legally required seal of approval from the LA County Sheriff’s Department. From the start of 2024 to March 2025, nearly 4,000 people sought permits. The Department deigned to grant just two of them their constitutional rights – “a mere 0.05% approval rate.”
That’s not how the system is supposed to work. It’s been three years since the U.S. Supreme Court held that “ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a…right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense.” Apparently, the Sheriff’s Department has not gotten the message.
Or maybe it has, but it just doesn’t care. The Department of Justice’s complaint says the sheriff is not straightforwardly denying permit applications but instead using “a deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay.” The average applicant waits more than nine months for his or her application to start being processed. Some have had to endure nearly three years of delays. Others are told to show up for their interviews on days set two years into the future. “Numerous applicants simply gave up and withdrew their applications,” according to the complaint. It is not as though California technically allows for this degree of foot-dragging. State law holds that permit decisions are supposed to be made within 120 days.
Orange County residents might be surprised to learn that these problems afflict their neighbors, unless they regularly head into LA and must navigate the regulatory inconsistency. The OC Sheriff’s Department has a strong track record of processing concealed-carry applications quickly, routinely approving them, and even letting much of the paperwork be submitted online.
Appalled by the LA sheriff’s disregard for the Constitution, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has brought a civil rights lawsuit alleging that the county has a “pattern or practice” of violating the Second Amendment. Pattern-or-practice suits to protect civil rights, first authorized by Congress in the wake of the beating of Rodney King by LA law enforcement, are often a big sign that something’s gone very wrong. For instance, the LA Sheriff’s Department settled another such suit in 2013 after DOJ determined that it “had subjected Black and Latino people to brutal violence, illegal searches, and other forms of discrimination.”
Pattern-or-practice suits can be brought for violations of any federally protected rights, but this latest litigation represents a landmark development. It is the first time DOJ has filed one alleging violations of the Second Amendment. Echoing the Supreme Court, head of the Civil Rights Division (and longtime Californian) Harmeet Dhillon stated that the suit is meant to signal that keeping and bearing arms “is not a second-class right.”
LA County now faces a choice. It can dig in and resist recognizing its people’s constitutional rights, or it can learn from the OC’s experience. A decade ago, DOJ opened a pattern-or-practice investigation into the OC Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office for violating people’s rights using jailhouse informants. DOJ ultimately made recommendations, and the Sheriff’s Department later boasted that it made “proactive reforms” putting its practices “among the best in the nation.”
Whether LA County fixes its problems willingly like the OC did or a federal court obligates it to, DOJ’s Los Angeles suit should be good news for ordinary Californians. Dhillon also promises that relief for other Americans is on the way, saying her division is establishing a new unit to defend Second Amendment rights.
DOJ’s first Second Amendment pattern-or-practice suit is a good start. While Nolan Ryan’s no-hitters are the stuff of legend, getting a concealed-carry permit in LA County, or anywhere in the country, shouldn’t have to be.
Matthew Cavedon is director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice.