A panel of three judges from the United States Circuit Court for the Ninth Circuit upheld a district court decision that knocked down two provisions of Hawaii’s firearms laws. The case is currently known as Yukutake v. Lopez.
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