Ninth Circuit (Finally) Rules Hawaii’s Gun Purchase Permit and Registration Time Limits are Unconstitutional

SNW March 14, 2025: … The Ninth heard oral arguments in the case in January of 2024. And that’s where the case sits more than a year later. Short of filing a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, there’s little that can be done to get a Circuit Court of Appeals to move its collective judicial ass and issue a ruling. The Ninth, which is quite sympathetic to California’s insatiable desire to limit its citizens’ gun rights, know this, of course, and is in no hurry to move things along, especially when the case law is decidedly against you.

That explains the amount of time a Ninth Circuit three-judge panel took to decide a case it ruled on today out of Hawaii. Yukutake v. Lopez challenged Hawaii’s ridiculously small time window citizens have to legally buy a firearm after the state deigns to grant them permission to do so.

If you’re not familiar with Hawaii’s ludicrously restrictive gun laws — and there’s no reason you should be — once a permit to purchase is issued, the individual then must buy the firearm within a certain time period. The law originally limited the period to 10 days (for handguns…long gun purchase permits are good for a year). Once the challenge was filed and began to progress, Hawaii extended the time period to 30 days, no doubt hoping that would be enough to moot the case.

There’s a second aspect of the law. Once the firearm is purchased, it then needs to be registered. That’s done by physically bringing the gun into your local police department for a “safety inspection” and registration. But the law gives citizens only five days to get that done.

Both requirements — the period allowed to buy the gun and the even shorter period to get it registered — were what was being challenged in Yakutake. Today, in a two-to-one ruling, the Ninth Circuit panel upheld a lower court that ruled both needlessly short time limits violate the Second Amendment. That’s because the 2A includes the right to acquire firearms and Hawaii’s legal limits on the process are undue burdens that are civil rights violations.

Note, however, that this case was argued in February of 2023. So it’s taken the three-judge panel more than two years to rule on the case….

read … Ninth Circuit (Finally) Rules Hawaii’s Gun Purchase Permit and Registration Time Limits are Unconstitutional - Shooting News Weekly

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Hawaii's Handgun Purchase, Inspection Laws Held Unconstitutional

BB March 14, 2025: … Time period for acquiring gun after getting permit too short --State didn’t justify broad in-person inspections of handguns…

Hawaii’s requirements that a person purchase a handgun within 30 days of obtaining a permit to do so, and then present the gun at a police station for inspection within five days of the purchase, violate the Second Amendment, the Ninth Circuit said Friday.

Although the state has an interest in ensuring that background information isn’t stale, it didn’t show that information more than 30 days old is stale, Judge Daniel P. Collins said for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit….

read … Hawaii's Handgun Purchase, Inspection Laws Held Unconstitutional

PDF: Yukutake v. Lopez, No. 21-16756 (9th Cir. 2025) :: Justia