I just read a lot of the opinion. Bear in mind that I am not being paid to look at it, so my level of effort is not going to be that great.
It seems like the lower court begged for this. In fact, the impression I get is that the judge had no respect for this plaintiff and did her best to turf his case into oblivion, using frivolous conclusions. How unusual for a judge. Not.
The lower court judge is one Helen Gillmor. Schooled in New York and Boston. Clinton appointee. It appears that her record was undistinguished prior to her appointment. She was a PD and worked as a part-time judge in family court. Family law is not a field that draws Borks and Cardozos. It's pretty simple stuff, like insurance defense.
EDIT: she apparently did part-time work as a state district judge. Not that this indicates that she is bright or even of normal intelligence.
She said the Second Amendment didn't give people the right to carry outside the home, so it didn't cover the plaintiff's beef. That was stupid. The text says "keep and bear," which is 18th-Century for "own and carry." She was asking to be slapped down.
The appellate opinion describes some of Hawaii's gun laws, and it's horrifying. Apparently, you can't have a gun in your vehicle in Hawaii! Not until today, anyway. So much for Magnum P.I. and his trusty 1911. You can't transport a gun unless going to gun range, going to gunsmith, yada yada yada. Basically, Hawaii says people in cars are not allowed to defend themselves.
Judge Ratched also held that the suit against the state (one of the defendants) was barred by sovereign immunity. This is a limited immunity enjoyed by government bodies and personnel. It is not something I have dealt with a lot, but the basic idea is that certain lawsuits are barred in order to prevent nuts from crippling the government with litigation and to keep them from punishing government employees for doing their jobs. It seems bizarre to apply it here, since there are all sorts of exceptions to it.
If the cops give you a beating, for example, you can file for relief under 42 U.S. Code § 1983, which allows people to sue when the government deprives them of their rights. The plaintiff in the Young case sued under this statute, so one wonders what the judge was thinking. She (her clerks, really) researched the case, and I have not, so maybe she knows something I don't, but it smells bad.
I shouldn't sell myself short. The appellate court agrees with me.
The interesting thing about the reversal is that the Ninth Circuit is totally behind restrictions on CONCEALED carry yet holds that OPEN carry has to be allowed. Imagine the havoc this is going to stir up. Open carry is like Nazism to liberals.
The court goes into a discussion of the meaning of the terms "keep" and "bear," as I did above, and they come to the same (unavoidable) conclusion I did. "Bear" means nothing if you can only "bear" inside your house. They cite these words from Wrenn v. D.C.: "After all, the Amendment’s core lawful purpose is self-defense, and the need for that might arise beyond as well as within the home."
DUH.
Following this, there is a very long and boring study of the history of gun laws, and it ends with an affirmation: the right to keep and bear arms is an INDIVIDUAL right not tied to membership in a militia. They cite the Heller case to this effect. This short-circuits a cloud of cases that incorrectly invoke the militia thing, and the court discounts them. Buh-BYE.
There are a couple of confusing paragraphs about cases limiting carry (not necessarily concealed), but it's not all that important to understand the badly written text, because at the end, the court refuses to follow these cases.
Unbelievably, the court then goes into a discussion of post-Civil-War laws intended to take guns away from freed slaves. I feel like I'm dreaming. Is this really the Ninth Circuit? Are they really comparing gun control to slavery? Pinch me! The conclusion, based on the freedmen-related cases is this: 2A must provide a right to OPENLY CARRY.
This is where I fainted for a minute.
Take a look: "The right to bear arms must include, at the least, the right to carry a firearm openly for self-defense."
In HAWAII, mind you.
After this, there is a long section pimp-slapping the dissenter. I didn't read it. Tedious and not all that important, since the majority ruling is now the law. The majority judges were just trying to poison the well and make the dissenter look stupid.
Now I'll mention a few things we should consider.
One of the majority judges was a guy with a huge Gaelic-looking name. He is a Reagan appointee. He appears to be conservative. He has made trouble for gun-grabbers before.
The other majority judge was one Sandra Ikuta. I don't see a lot of information about her on the web, but she was appointed by Bush II, and the L.A. Times was sufficiently disturbed to include her in an article on the conservative "threat" to the Ninth Circuit.
The dissenter (spit) is one Richard Clifton, also a Bush II appointee.
It's important to know where the judges came from, because with an issue like this, it pretty much tells us what they'll decide. A Clinton appointee screwed this case up. A Reagan appointee and a Bush II appointee fixed it.
This illustrates a point most voters are too stupid to understand: when you vote for a president, you are voting for every federal judge appointed during his term, and those judges decide what the law means. If the local district court tells you the RICO Act bars eating Cheez Doodles on Yom Kippur, that's what it means, until the case is appealed. It's extremely important to vote for presidents who basically agree with your view, EVEN IF THEY HAVE ORANGE HAIR AND MADE FUN OF YOUR CANDIDATE DURING DEBATES.
This case shows that voting intelligently can make a difference even on the Ninth Circuit, which is generally considered to be hopelessly biased.
Will the case survive in its current form? Too early to say, but it looks great right now.
If I'm wrong about any of this, pay me a huge fee, and I'll do real research and correct myself.
Are you saying Second Amendment does not apply outside of home?
