A federal appeals court judge is publicly urging the Supreme Court to slap down the Ninth Circuit's gun-rights decisions, warning that nothing less will stop the court from rubber-stamping every firearms restriction California puts on the books.
Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, issued a blistering dissent after the full court refused to rehear a ruling that upheld a California law banning the concealed carry of switchblade knives. VanDyke did not hold back. He said the Ninth Circuit has a "long and concerning history of refusing to vindicate the Second Amendment," even after the Supreme Court's landmark 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a ruling that reshaped how courts must evaluate gun laws by requiring them to measure restrictions against the nation's historical tradition of firearms regulation.
His remedy: summary reversals from the nation's highest court. In plain English, he wants the justices to overturn Ninth Circuit gun rulings without even bothering to hear full oral arguments, a procedural move sometimes called a "benchslap" because it signals that the lower court's reasoning was so far off base it did not merit extended review.
VanDyke did not stop at legal argument. He included a mock letter in his dissent, written as though the Supreme Court were addressing the Ninth Circuit directly. As Breitbart News reported, VanDyke wrote:
"Dear lower court: Your decision sucks.... And it sucks so badly, it isn't even worth a closer look. Kindly re-do it. Regards, The Supreme Court."
That kind of language from a sitting federal judge drew predictable criticism from some of his colleagues on the bench, who accused him of using "vulgar barroom talk." VanDyke fired back in the same dissent.
"So let me assuage my colleagues' selective Victorian predilections up front. Calm down."
The tone is unusual for a federal appellate opinion. But VanDyke's underlying complaint is deadly serious: the Ninth Circuit, which covers California and eight other western states, keeps upholding firearms restrictions that he argues cannot survive honest application of the Supreme Court's own precedent.
The switchblade case is not the first time VanDyke has gone to extraordinary lengths to challenge his court's Second Amendment record. In March 2025, he issued a video dissent, an almost unheard-of move in federal appellate courts, in Duncan v. Bonta, a case involving California's ban on firearm magazines holding more than ten rounds.
The Ninth Circuit majority in that case held that a magazine holding more than ten rounds is not an "arm" protected by the Second Amendment. VanDyke found the reasoning dangerous. He laid out California's own logic on camera:
"California acknowledges that a magazine is necessary to make a firearm function, but they argue that because you can replace the standard magazine with one that holds fewer rounds, ten rounds or less, then these higher capacity magazines are not an arm, thus wholly unprotected by the Second Amendment."
VanDyke warned that the same argument could be applied to virtually every component of a firearm, the barrel, the trigger assembly, the grip, because each part can theoretically be swapped for a different version. Follow that logic to its end, he argued, and essentially nothing on a firearm would be protected by the Second Amendment.
That is not a hypothetical slippery slope. It is a description of how the Ninth Circuit's own reasoning works when applied consistently. If a standard-capacity magazine is not an "arm" because a smaller one exists, then no specific firearm component qualifies for constitutional protection, and the Second Amendment becomes a right without a subject.
VanDyke's call for "benchslaps" rather than conventional Supreme Court review reflects a specific frustration. The Supreme Court already told lower courts how to evaluate gun laws in Bruen. The Ninth Circuit, in VanDyke's telling, has simply refused to follow the instruction. A full merits hearing, with briefing, oral argument, and a lengthy opinion, treats the lower court's error as a close question. A summary reversal treats it as obvious defiance.
The Supreme Court has already handed down significant Second Amendment victories in recent terms. But those wins have not stopped the Ninth Circuit from reaching outcomes that critics say contradict the high court's framework. VanDyke's dissent amounts to a plea: stop granting these cases the dignity of full review and start treating them as what they are, willful noncompliance.
"To put it more colloquially, it's time for some benchslaps. Nothing less will give this court any pause before ultimately blessing every arms restriction it reviews."
That sentence is the heart of VanDyke's argument. He is not asking the Supreme Court to create new law. He is asking the justices to enforce the law they already made.
The Ninth Circuit has long been the most frequently reversed federal appeals court in the country. Its decisions on immigration, criminal sentencing, and religious liberty have drawn repeated correction from the Supreme Court. But VanDyke's dissent suggests that on Second Amendment questions, the problem runs deeper than ordinary legal disagreement.
Ordinary disagreement produces close cases. What VanDyke describes is a court that treats Bruen as an obstacle to work around rather than a binding precedent to apply. The switchblade case is one example. Duncan v. Bonta is another. In both, the Ninth Circuit reached results that VanDyke argues cannot be squared with the Supreme Court's historical-tradition test, and in both, the full court declined to rehear the case.
The Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on additional gun-rights cases in the near future. Whether the justices choose the summary-reversal route VanDyke is advocating or take the slower path of full briefing and argument, the Ninth Circuit's Second Amendment record will be front and center.
VanDyke's colleagues may not appreciate his tone. Some clearly do not, the "vulgar barroom talk" accusation makes that plain. But tone is not the issue. The issue is whether a federal appeals court can effectively nullify a Supreme Court precedent by interpreting it into irrelevance, case after case, without consequence.
The broader question matters beyond gun rights. When lower courts treat Supreme Court rulings as suggestions rather than commands, the entire system of judicial hierarchy breaks down. That dynamic has played out in First Amendment cases and in disputes over state regulatory authority as well. VanDyke is pointing to the same structural problem from inside one of the courts most often accused of it.
Several consequential cases remain on the Supreme Court's docket, and the justices' willingness to police lower-court defiance will shape how aggressively states like California can continue restricting firearms. VanDyke has made his position clear: polite correction has not worked.
When a federal judge has to write a mock letter to get his own court's attention, the problem is not his manners. It is the court that made the letter necessary.