USCA9 Upholds Hawai’i Gun Law

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today rejected a challenge to Hawai’i “open carry” law in a 7-4 decision. Judge Bybee writes for the court majority, “After careful review of the history of early English and American regulation of carrying arms openly in the public square, we conclude that Hawai‘i’s restrictions on the open carrying of firearms reflect longstanding prohibitions and that the conduct they regulate is therefore outside the historical scope of the Second Amendment.”

Judge O’Scannlain, dissenting, emphatically disagrees:

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” U.S. Const. amend. II (emphasis added). Today, a majority of our court has decided that the Second Amendment does not mean what it says. Instead, the majority holds that while the Second Amendment may guarantee the right to keep a firearm for self-defense within one’s home, it provides no right whatsoever to bear—i.e., to carry—that same firearm for self-defense in any other place.

A petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to take this case up for review is nearly certain. I won’t make any predictions on it being granted, though. The high court has passed on a lot of Second Amendment cases that seemed to be eminently “certworthy.”

The case is Young v. Hawai’i, No. 12-17808.