Harris v. Silvester
(opposing California’s 10-day waiting period for firearms purchases)

admin Firearms Law

California requires residents to wait 10 days after a purchase before a lawful buyer may acquire a lawful firearm.  Several California residents challenged the law as unconstitutional.

The federal district court struck down the 10-day waiting period, based not on the text and context of the Second Amendment, but on the same type of judicially devised interest balancing test that the Supreme Court rejected in Heller.

We filed an amicus curiae brief in the Ninth Circuit opposing the notion that California’s waiting period is “presumptively lawful” under Heller as a “condition on commercial sales of arms.”  Second, our brief showed that waiting periods for firearm purchases do not fall within any of Heller’s “presumptively lawful” categories of regulations.  Finally, our brief argued that, while the district court below correctly determined that the waiting period is unconstitutional, it did so for the wrong reasons.

The case is now pending in the Ninth Circuit.

CLDEF Amicus Curiae Brief (June 2, 2015)