Thread on Yukutake, the Ninth Circuit's latest en banc reversal of a 2A panel win.
The laws at issue are Hawaii rules requiring (1) a narrow window of time to buy a gun after getting a purchase permit; and (2) a post-purchase inspection of that purchased gun at a police station.
The laws at issue are abusive and also outliers even among antigun states, so it's a bit of a bummer Hawaii won. While we expect to always lose in the Ninth, with a recent dissent from Judge VanDyke hinting that the Ninth Circuit is on the lookout for token wins to give 2A to shake the criticism that the pro-2A side always loses here. So I suspected Yukutake fit that perfectly, given how dumb these laws are.
Nope!
Thread below.
Sep 22, 2026 · 4:17 PM UTC
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Based on the summary, the Ninth Circuit seems to be doing the thing where it just says any "shall issue" system is fine, so long as it isn't "abusive." And of course, the judges get to determine if it is abusive (interest balancing, yay!).
This is BS and against what SCOTUS just said in Wolford....but, they have only themselves to blame for not cleaning up Bruen footnote 9. They gave the hack circuits an inch, and they are taking a mile.
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See how they reverse the burden? 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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Haven't read the exact dissents yet of course, but this looks to be a 6-5. Progress! We usually lose by more than that. 🤣
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WTF? No, providing SSN and mental health records is certainly NOT the norm in most shall-issue jurisdictions.
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As is often the case when it is sued by Alan Beck, Hawaii changed the law to make it a little less abusive, and that seems to have paid off.
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Even if you treat footnote 9 as Bruen-exempt - and SCOTUS has reaffirmed in Wolford that the analysis does not work that way - at most they were talking about the CCW permit regimes they referenced in that footnote.
The Hawaii laws at issue are unique in the country. They should not get the carveout, SCOTUS wasn't talking about them.
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Judge Owens (super bummed he wrote this, BTW, I guess he wanted back into the Ninth Circuit cool kids club) omits Wolford entirely from this opening summary. And based on a text search, it barely appears in the majority opinion at all.
Pretty wild, considering how harsh it was on Hawaii laws generally and how it clarified that the "plain text" step is not some hard one to meet.
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With Rhode still pending, I guess we'll soon see if the Ninth Circuit considers an ammo background check regime that wrongfully denies over 10% of people who use it sufficiently "abusive"!
I bet on that one, they'll do a bullshit facial challenge dodge. "Well, most people can buy ammo fine, so the rest will have to do as-applied challenges," or some BS like that which would never fly in any other constitutional rights context but 2A.
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So in one of the majority's only 2 cites to Wolford, it just says SCOTUS didn't alter footnote 9, while ignoring how much damage they did do to their precedent in B&L Productions, which the majority here seems to be carefully avoiding discussing.
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The majority cites the Tenth Circuit's Rocky Mountain Gun Owners case, but not Ortega, which said that the acquisition of arms comes within the plain text of the Second Amendment and this laws regulating it require historical support.
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It's bullshit to mention these Fifth Circuit cases without also mentioning that they are almost certainly going to be en banc'd. Numerous judges there have hinted as much, and also, Elite Precision last week really narrowed McRorey.
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Haha, that's one way to deal with Wolford obliterating B&L Productions - just don't discuss the "bedeviling question" at all.
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"And we get to determine where that line is, which totally isn't interest balancing."
🙄
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Hahaha so the same fucking Court that had to be reversed in Wolford declares that THESE Hawaii laws are fine, and SCOTUS definitely wasn't talking about them when it bashed the "aloha spirit."
Come on.
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Judge Nelson is correct, and obviously so. The majority did not even try to respond to this.
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Let's not minimize how bullshit footnote 9 is, Judge Nelson.
SCOTUS expounded on this great historical tradition test in Bruen.
Then, in footnote 9, it claimed shall-issue permit regimes are totally fine, even though such regimes would never pass that historical test.
In that sense, the majority has kind of a point at least if this were a CCW regime like the one footnote 9 was talking about. SCOTUS *did* give them that rope, as dumb as that was. (But where they err is claiming it means ANY shall issue regime is fine, even outside the ones SCOTUS was referencing)
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Coincidentally, we are filing an amicus brief today in Beckwith to urge SCOTUS to grant cert. They could address this issue there if they want to.
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Stop being respectful to courts that don't deserve it.
They didn't "misunderstand." They intentionally mischaracterized.
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This is actually a pretty good response to courts that apply footnote 9 to mere possession. Even I have struggled with how to deal with that, because if shall-issue is fine for the "and bear" part, it seems intuitive that it works for the "to keep" portion too.
Judge Nelson addresses that well.
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"Footnote 9 is not a standard; it is a statement about the potential application of a standard."
That's going into briefs.
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Judge Nelson citing Judge Owens's Nguyen opinion to push back on Judge Owens's Yukutake opinion is amusing.
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And Elite Precision just got published by the Fifth Circuit and backs up Judge Nelson on this point. Alan did a 28(j) yesterday, but I guess it was too late to include.
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Nelson argues even if the majority were correct about its expansive read of footnote 9, Hawaii should still lose because its law is abusive.
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Ya, this reasoning from Hawaii is absurd.
"We need the inspection requirement to make sure the person that complied with our strict permit-to-purchase rules didn't make an illegal ghost gun."
Ya, I'm sure that happens a lot.
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Nelson discusses how other circuits have split with the Beckwith ruling and explicitly said acquisition of arms is covered. This is why the majority bitched out of talking about B&L, they know they'd march it even more clearly into a circuit split. So instead, we get this footnote 9 dodge alone from the majority.
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