States can prohibit people from openly carrying guns in public, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday, adding a voice to a heated issue that the U.S. Supreme Court may soon address.
In a 7-4 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a Hawaii law that bans residents from openly carrying firearms without a license, which is issued only to those who can show they need the weapons to protect life or property. Police and members of the armed forces are exempt. California also requires open-carry licenses, which are virtually unavailable in the state’s most populous counties.
“Our review of more than 700 years of English and American legal history reveals a strong theme: government has the power to regulate arms in the public square,” Judge Jay Bybee, one of the appeals court’s most conservative members, said in the majority opinion.
“There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor is any such right within the scope of the Second Amendment,” Bybee said. “It remains as true today as it was centuries ago, that the mere presence of such weapons presents a terror to the public and that widespread carrying of handguns would strongly suggest that state and local governments have lost control of our public areas.”
In dissent, Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain said the right to “keep and bear arms,” declared in the Second Amendment, “must include, at the least, the right to carry a firearm openly for self-defense.” He was joined by Judges Consuelo Callahan, Sandra Ikuta and Ryan Nelson.
The ruling comes as the Senate debates background checks for gun purchases in the wake of mass shootings in Boulder, Colo., and Atlanta that killed 18 people in the last week. President Biden called Tuesday for a renewed ban on assault weapons, high-capacity firearms that reload automatically. A national ban on the sale of such weapons expired in 2004.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment allows Americans to possess handguns at home for self-defense but has not decided whether it allows carrying firearms in public. When the Ninth Circuit upheld California’s ban on publicly carrying concealed handguns in 2016, the Supreme Court denied review of an appeal by gun advocates and left the ruling intact.
Appeals courts have reached diverse conclusions on state laws banning openly carrying handguns, and the high court could decide next week whether to take up the issue in an appeal of a ruling upholding a similar law in New York state.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/us-worl...als-court-says-no-it-s-not-OK-to-16050611.php