When A Gun Control Law Goes Too Far for a Ninth Circuit Panel

The Ninth Circuit isn’t exactly the most pro-gun court in the federal judicial system. Sure, Saint Benitez is a Ninth Circuit judge, but he’s the exception, not the rule.

So, when the Ninth Circuit rules on a gun case, we usually know how it’s going, especially when it’s a panel at the court. They don’t like the right to keep and bear arms, so if they can find a way to uphold a regulation, they’re going to.

Which means it takes something pretty bad for them to stomp on it.

Leave it to Hawaii to do just that.

The first provision the plaintiffs challenged was a narrow time window a gun buyer had after receiving a permit to acquire a firearm to purchase that gun. The original statute gave a gun buyer ten days to obtain their firearm. Hawaii would amend its law to change the 10-day time frame to acquire a gun to 30 days. This change was an effort to moot the case, but the ploy failed, and the case continued.

The Ninth Circuit upheld the district’s court decision. It ruled that the short time period the State gave violated the plaintiff’s Second Amendment rights. The first step in determining if a gun law is constitutional is to see if the plain text of the Second Amendment protects the conduct. The Courts have long held that the right to acquire arms is part of the right to bear arms. Once that is determined, the onus falls on the State to prove that a law is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. That feat is done through historical analogues.

The decision reads: “The panel affirmed the district court’s judgment that the short timeframe for completing the purchase of a firearm after obtaining a permit was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The purchase and acquisition of firearms is conduct protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment. Because § 134-2(e) regulates conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text, the Second Amendment presumptively protects that conduct. The burden therefore fell on the State to justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.”

The second provision knocked down is the requirement for a gun buyer to bring their newly purchased firearms to the police station for an in-person inspection. The panel ruled that this requirement is overly burdensome for gun owners. The inspections only take place during certain times, meaning that gun owners might have to take off work to have their firearms inspected. The court believes the real point of the provision is to burden the gun owner.

Which, of course, it was.

There’s absolutely no reason for a gun to be inspected by the police. It might be different if there was a problem with guns exploding in people’s faces when they pulled the trigger and law enforcement offered to inspect guns for safety, but that’s not what was going on here. It was nothing more than an attempt to make it too much of a pain to bother getting a gun in the first place.

And, to be honest, so was the short time period to get a gun in the first place. 

All of it was built around making it a pain to get a firearm at all. 

When things are difficult, many people will just opt to not bother. I know I’m certainly this way, and I suspect a lot of other people are as well. That was the whole point.

The Ninth Circuit panel could see through that, and Hawaii couldn’t show any historical analogs to justify what they were trying to do here. Let’s remember that this is Hawaii, a state so anti-gun that its own Supreme Court tried to argue that the “Aloha spirit” trumped the Second Amendment. It was so egregious that one of the most anti-gun courts in the nation looked at it and struck the laws down.

That’s a testament to just how bad these regulations actually were.