This is a sad second amendment handgun carry case, Young v. Hawaii. The saddest fact is nothing can be done at this late stage to salvage it, thanks to the lawyer who represented Mr. Young on appeal.
Mr. Young represented himself in the district court. He is not a lawyer which is obvious by his complaint (and no offense to Mr. Young intended as you shall see). Nonetheless, in his 53 page complaint Mr. Young did one thing right. He stated that he had been denied a license to carry a handgun openly or concealed AND he asked for a license in his Prayer for Relief that he be given a license to carry a handgun openly or concealed.
Mr. Young no longer has standing to obtain a concealed carry permit but he did have standing to seek a handgun Open Carry license. The denial of a state license always confers standing on the party denied the license in this circuit.
Unfortunately, Mr. Young found himself an attorney for his appeal.
Instead of simply asking for a license to carry a handgun in public, his attorney asked the court to do something it cannot do and that is issue an Order compelling the law to be rewritten.
Courts cannot issues orders compelling a legislature to take a coffee break let alone write a new law. In the alternative, Mr. Youngs attorney, Alan Beck, asked the court to strike down Hawaiis licensing law but not the laws which prohibit Mr. Young from carrying a handgun in public without a license.
I kid you not.
The court of appeals can, with the stroke of a pen, strike down Hawaiis licensing law but if it did, Mr. Young would still be prohibited from carrying a handgun in public.
Mr. Youngs attorney sought various other things, such as striking down Hawaiis prohibitions on switchblade and butterfly knives and Hawaiis long gun Open Carry ban but since Mr. Young did not seek to carry a long gun in the district court that claim is forfeited on appeal as is Mr. Youngs desire to carry other weapons, including switchblade and butterfly knives, because Hawaii does not issue licenses to carry switchblades, butterfly knives or stun guns and the courts can not force Hawaii to write a licensing law which would permit Mr. Young to even possess these items let alone carry them in public.
Mr. Youngs appeal was stayed pending the disposition of another of Mr. Becks appeals which likewise went down in flames nearly three weeks ago (Baker v. Kealoha).
Ironically, had Mr. Young continued to represent himself on appeal without the benefit of an attorney then the court of appeals would have had to liberally construe Mr. Youngs briefs in his favor.
That is no longer possible.
California Open Carry Appeal Charles Nichols v. Edmund Brown, Jr., et al
Six years ago this May, I announced that I would be filing a lawsuit which seeks to overturn Californias 1967 ban on openly carrying loaded firearms in public. California would subsequently ban the Open Carry of unloaded handguns and long guns as well. I amended my complaint to challenge those bans as well as challenge two California handgun carry license laws which prohibit the issuance of handgun Open Carry permits in counties with a population of 200,000 or more people and limits the validity of the licenses to the county of issuance.
These same past six years I have watched concealed carry lawsuits fall like flies across the nation because the lawyers in those cases argued that when the US Supreme Court said that concealed carry is not a right and can therefore be prohibited, what the high court actually said is that Open Carry can be banned in favor of concealed carry.
As such, all of these cases lost on appeal.
Unlike Baker v. Kealoha or Young v. Hawaii, there are no standing or jurisdictional problems with my appeal and the states attorney does not claim that there are any. The Second Amendment questions in my appeal resolve into one simple question Does the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms extend even one inch outside the doors to our home?
I argue that it does. If the panel of 9th circuit judges assigned to my appeal agrees, then I win.
The California states attorney argues that there is no right to carry outside of the home and he especially argues that there is no right to openly carry a firearm for the purpose of self-defense outside of ones home.
If the state wins then it creates multiple SCOTUS Rule 10 splits which is something no Second Amendment cert petition to SCOTUS has been able to claim and SCOTUS rarely grants a cert petition without a Rule 10 split.
The Only Second Amendment Win in 9th Circuit is by a Non-Lawyer
This June marks the 9th anniversary of the landmark Second Amendment decision by the Supreme Court, District of Columbia v. Heller. In all of that time there has been but one Second Amendment win in the 9th circuit and that case was won by Paul Murphy, who is not an attorney.
Mr. Murphy succeeded in striking down the handgun Open Carry ban in the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI).
In the same lawsuit, Mr. Murphy succeeded in striking down the CNMIs: 1) Registration of firearms, 2) Ban on long gun calibers above .223, 3) Ban on Assault Rifle Attachments to semiautomatic rifles and, 4) The $1,000 excise tax on pistols.
The judge would have struck down the CNMIs storage restrictions on firearms in the home and ban on large capacity magazines but didnt because she was prevented from doing so because of a 9th circuit court of appeals decision argued and lost by NRA lawyers.
The Second Amendment is too important to be trusted to lawyers.
Continue reading here:
The Next Second Amendment Handgun Carry Case to Go Down in Flames - NewsBlaze (registration) (blog)