In a recent ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, has claimed that the Second Amendment does not support the right to carry a firearm in public, either openly or concealed.
Any person reading the plain language of the Second Amendment would assume that codifying the right to “bear” arms was intended to protect the right to actually bear them. The applicable definition of the word bear in Webster’s dictionary is “to be equipped or furnished with (something).”
Reason.com explains the case here:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit today held that the Second Amendment does not guarantee a right to openly carry firearms for self-defense. Combined with a 2016 decision involving concealed firearms, the ruling means that the Second Amendment does not extend beyond the home for residents of the 9th Circuit, which includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
According to the majority opinion by Judge Jay Bybee, history shows that legal restrictions on carrying unconcealed firearms, including virtual bans like Hawaii’s, are the sort of “longstanding prohibitions” that the Supreme Court has suggested the Second Amendment allows. The four dissenters think history shows nothing of the sort.
“The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,'” Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain writes in a blistering dissent joined by Judges Consuelo Callahan, Sandra Ikuta, and Ryan Nelson. “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….We now become the first and only court of appeals to hold that public carry falls entirely outside the scope of the Amendment’s protections.” The majority’s reasoning, O’Scannlain says, “reduces the right to ‘bear Arms’ to a mere inkblot.”
The case involves a challenge to Hawaii’s highly restrictive carry permit policy, which requires that applicants demonstrate “the urgency or the need” to carry unconcealed firearms, that they have “good moral character,” and that they be “engaged in the protection of life and property.” As interpreted by Hawaii County (the “Big Island”), those standards limit open-carry permits to “private detectives and security guards.”
Hawaii’s concealed-carry policy, which was not at issue in this case, is similarly restrictive. It requires a permit applicant to satisfy the county police chief that he represents “an exceptional case” and that he has “reason to fear injury” to his “person or property.”
George Young, a Hawaii County resident, unsuccessfully applied for a carry permit twice in 2011, citing a general need for self-defense. He argued that Hawaii’s law was inconsistent with the Second Amendment.
A federal judge ruled against Young in 2012, but a three-judge 9th Circuit panel that included O’Scannlain and Ikuta overturned that decision in 2018. Drawing a distinction between concealed carry and open carry, O’Scannlain and Ikuta concluded that “the Second Amendment encompasses the right of a responsible law-abiding citizen to carry a firearm openly for self-defense outside of the home.” After the 9th Circuit agreed to rehear the case, seven of the 11 judges assigned to it voted to uphold Hawaii’s law.
Read more here.
Action Line: With legislators in Washington preparing to assault your Second Amendment rights, and activist judges sitting in Courts like the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, there’s never been a better time to get your gun and your training now.
