9th Circuit: "What Do You Mean, 'Bear' Arms?"

Hawaii has a law that permits you to carry firearms, provided you obtain a license from the state that requires you to establish that you have an "urgent need" for such a firearm. A man named George Young applied for such a license, but the state was not satisfied that he proved the urgency of his need to carry one. He just wanted to carry a gun in case he needed to defend himself, but had established no reason to believe that it was likely he would need to do so. They thus turned him down, and he sued. 

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld them in doing so, but gone rather farther. They assert that Americans have no right to carry weapons in public at all. 

“There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor is any such right within the scope of the Second Amendment,” the court ruled in an “en banc” decision that involved all the panel’s judges.

“We can find no general right to carry arms into the public square for self-defense,” the majority wrote, claiming that the Second Amendment applies to the “defense of hearth and home.”

“The power of the government to regulate carrying arms in the public square does not infringe in any way on the right of an individual to defend his home or business,” the judges wrote.

This seems to be the evolving position on the Second Amendment from the statists in response to Heller. 'Ok, maybe you have a right to own a gun that we can't completely reject,' they say, 'but only at home.' The District of Columbia will now let you own a gun, to be kept at home, registered with the police; you may not even possess ammunition for it without that permit. You may also not carry it anywhere without an additional license that they are under no obligation to provide you. (They also have a list of handguns you're allowed to buy if approved to buy them, which is called the "List of Handguns Not Determined to be Unsafe," and a list of guns you're definitely not, which they call an "Assault Weapons" ban though it appears to have been constructed largely based on scary appearances.)

So they are responding to the "right to keep and bear arms" somewhat like Ms. Clinton asking whether she was being asked if she had wiped her server with a cloth. "Yes, you can keep it at home; but bear it? What on earth could that mean? Like ride around on a bear with it? That sounds horribly unsafe."