Ninth Circuit Appeals Court: If Hawaii Restricts Citizens' Ability to Carry Concealed, Then There Must Be An Absolute Right to Open Carry

Huge ruling.

Hawaii sharply limits who can carry concealed -- basically, only people who have jobs in security and law enforcement can carry concealed.

The Ninth Circuit -- not the whole Ninth Circuit, which is a leftwing clownshow, but two of the three judges selected randomly to review the lower court's ruling here -- rules that people have the right to carry firearms (quoting the Supreme Court's MacDonald decision), and if the right to carry concealed is restricted by a state, that must mean that the other method of carrying, open carry, is absolute.

The court rules that the "right to keep and bear arms" is actually two rights: to "keep" arms is about storing arms on physical property, but to bear arms is to carry arms on one's person.

And it rules that Hawaii may not leave citizens with no way of exercising this latter right.

Hawaii screwed itself here by, like so many other gun-grabbing states and local governments, creating a #FakeNews application process for getting a concealed carry license, but literally never granting such an application:

The majority opinion gets salty with the dissent:

Hawaii will certainly request en banc review, which is where every judge on the Ninth Circuit rehears the case and issues a group ruling. Obviously Hawaii will probably win that -- but then it's on to the Supreme Court.

Wrong? Anon Y. Mous says that the Ninth Circuit's en banc review is not performed by all judges, but just a lot more judges than the usual 3-judge panel.

Like, 11 judges? I don't know, "11 judges" sticks in my mind for some reason.

I'm not sure either way.

Update: Anon Y. Mous was right, and I was right about 11 judges, once Anon Y. Mous corrected me. From Wikipedia on "En banc:"

Federal law provides that for courts with more than 15 judges, an en banc hearing may consist of "such number of members of its en banc courts as may be prescribed by rule of the court of appeals."[4] The Ninth Circuit, with 29 judges, uses this procedure, and its en banc court consists of 11 judges. Theoretically, the Ninth Circuit can hear the case with all judges participating.

posted by Ace of Spades at 03:13 PM

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