Professor Winkler is mostly correct.
I've known Professor Winkler for just over two and a half years. He does not own a gun and would prefer people not carry guns in public. But he is also the rarest of liberals, particularly liberal lawyers, who was able to read the Heller decision and recognize that the right to bear arms extends beyond one's front door whether he liked it or not.
Two years ago he said he did not know whether I would ultimately win before SCOTUS or if a concealed carry case would win but he was certain that one of us would prevail.
After Woollard was denied cert, I asked Professor Winkler if he still thought it was a coin toss between Open and Concealed Carry ultimately winning the day. He half jokingly replied that I should send thank you notes to all the concealed carry lawyers for giving me precedents to cite in support of my Open Carry lawsuit.
Adam Winkler is well respected by liberal jurists and known to the lawyer who has been writing California's gun control laws these last three decades.
The position Professor Winkler took in the Los Angeles Times Op/Ed piece a few of you are so highly critical of is close to one I have been trying to persuade him to take for nearly as long as I have known him.
"Close" does not mean exactly what I would have written, particularly in regards to unloaded Open Carry and the requirement of a license, but the Op/Ed piece did convey the message to those who count, the politicians in Sacramento and the Federal judges and their law clerks. That message was the title of the Op/Ed Piece "Want fewer guns on California streets? Open carry may be the answer."
After Richards v. Prieto and Baker v. Keoloah are decided, and decided by the same three judge panel that decided Peruta, my Open Carry lawsuit is the next in line to be taken under submission for a decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Mine will be the one that sets the binding precedent if Richards and Baker are similarly decided as was Peruta.
The 1967 Black Panther Loaded Open Carry ban will be overturned because of the racially discriminatory intent of the legislation regardless of whether or not the Court of Appeals decides to consider my remaining Second, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment challenges.
When the Loaded Open Carry ban is overturned, the California legislature is going to be scratching its collective head trying to figure out what to do next. The message I want to be ingrained in that collective mind is -
"Want fewer guns on California streets? Open carry IS the answer."
With Loaded Open Carry restored, the logic behind the Peruta decision collapses like a house of cards and concealed carry gets tossed on the trash heap.
Charles Nichols - President of
California Right To Carry
"[T]he carrying of concealed weapons may be absolutely prohibited without the infringement of any constitutional right, while a statute forbidding the bearing of arms openly would be such an infringement."
Peruta v. County of San Diego, slip op. No. 10-56971 (9th Cir. Feb. 13, 2014) at pg 26.
"To be clear, we are not holding that the Second Amendment requires the states to permit concealed carry. "
Peruta v. County of San Diego, slip op. No. 10-56971 (9th Cir. Feb. 13, 2014) at pg 61.
"[A] right to carry arms openly: "This is the right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and which is calculated to incite men to a manly and noble defence of themselves, if necessary, and of their country, without any tendency to secret advantages and unmanly assassinations.""
District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 - Supreme Court (2008) at 2809.
"Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues."
District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 - Supreme Court (2008) at 2816.