The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today upheld important provisions of Hawaiʻi’s firearm licensing laws, finding that the challenged requirements are consistent with the Second Amendment.

In the opinion, the court upheld Hawaiʻi’s requirements establishing a 30-day period to use a permit to acquire a handgun and requiring certain newly acquired firearms to be brought to a police station for inspection...

...Ultimately, we need not decide the bedeviling question of whether this is a step one or step two case under Bruen. We also need not—and should not—chart the entire constellation of possible shall-issue laws that one could draft or challenge. As the Fifth Circuit did in McRorey, we instead ask whether Plaintiffs have shown that the two presumptively lawful requirements in question—the thirtyday purchase provision and the police station inspection requirement—have been put toward “abusive ends” that would effectively “deny ordinary citizens” their Second Amendment rights. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 38 n.9.

Plaintiffs in this case have failed to make that showing. Cf. Md. Shall Issue, Inc., 116 F.4th at 227–29 (holding that Maryland’s comprehensive background check regime is permissible under Bruen and not abusive); McRorey, 99 F.4th at 836, 839–40 (noting that standard requirements such as background checks, “especially when not at all lengthy,” are not abusive for purposes of Bruen footnote 9); Peterson, 161 F.4th at 340–42 (holding that no evidence indicated that the challenged NFA provision was abusive as applied to the plaintiff). And while certain background checks, firearms safety courses, lengthy wait times, exorbitant fees, or other components of a shall-issue regime could trigger the Second Amendment’s protections, nothing in Plaintiffs’ Complaint suggests that either the thirty-day restriction or the police station inspection requirement crosses that line. At most, the provisions impose only modest, procedural burdens. They require compliance with a reasonable deadline and, for firearms that fall into the categories set out in § 134-3(a)– (c), see supra note 1, a brief administrative visit to verify basic information. They do not materially impede Plaintiffs from acquiring firearms. Even in light of Hawaii’s distinctive tradition of heightened firearm regulation, which the Supreme Court has viewed with skepticism, see Wolford, 146 S. Ct. at 2040, 2046, the requirements at issue here are not abusive...