The U.S. Supreme Court handed Hawaii’s gun owners a major victory in June when it struck down the state’s notorious “vampire rule,” but that win is diminished by an en banc ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday.
Reversing a lower court’s findings, the divided panel upheld two of the Aloha State’s most onerous firearm licensing rules.
One requires recipients of state-issued permits to purchase a specific handgun within 30 days, and the second mandates taking certain weapons to a police station for inspection.
9th Circuit clearly did not follow Bruen’s direction
The majority said that Hawaii’s mandates amount to only “modest, procedural burdens.” Five other judges vehemently disagreed on the basis that their counterparts misapplied 2022’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen’s obvious intent.
In a footnote, the high court four years ago said the decision does not invalidate lawful “shall issue” requirements, but they are open to challenge when abused. The task of demonstrating a law’s alignment with the Second Amendment is therefore on governing officials.
Judge Lawrence VanDyke blistered the six-judge majority for lacking comprehension of Bruen.
Dissenters sharply rejected majority’s take on ‘shall issue’
“If our court’s takeaway from Bruen is that Bruen changed the law to make it harder to mount a successful Second Amendment challenge, then somebody has seriously lost the plot,” VanDyke wrote. He added that it is unfathomable that a court could follow milestone gun rights rulings such as Bruen, Hemani, and Wolford with such a misapplication.
Indeed, the appeals court reversed the burden of proving that such laws are constitutional, shifting it from state officials to the citizenry.
The Second Amendment Foundation’s (SAF’s) Kostas Moros quickly posted on X that the court flipped Bruen’s clear placement of the burden of evidence on the government.
“See how they reverse the burden?” Moros noted. “Bruen was emphatic that the burden is on the government. The Ninth Circuit uses one footnote to reverse that whenever they can characterize a law as ‘shall-issue.’”
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