Hawaii has petitioned the Ninth Circuit for a rehearing En Banc in an attempt to overturn the recent 3-0 panel decision in Teter v. Lopez that Hawaii’s ban on Butterfly Knives is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. As explained in our original post, That was a huge win not just for owners of Butterfly Knives in Hawaii, but for all pro-Second Amendment supporters. Knife Rights filed an important amicus (friend of the court) brief in support of the appellants in that case.
Their intellectually dishonest petition makes a whole lot of specious claims, including that only weapons “commonly used for self-defense” are protected by the Second Amendment. That’s incorrect as the Bruen decision from the U.S. Supreme Court very clearly reiterated that arms usable for any “lawful purposes” are protected.
Their emotionally charged, overwrought and hyperbolic concluding paragraph should tell you all you need to know about how desperate Hawaii, and all the anti-Second Amendment supporters, are to overturn this pro-2A decision, because they indeed got it right about how important this decision in Teter is in the 2A fight:
If left undisturbed, the panel’s analysis will govern challenges involving many highly dangerous weapons that States quite reasonably seek to regulate or ban: assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and more. In this matter of life and death, the Court should ensure its precedent fully comports with the balance the Supreme Court struck in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen.
Hawaii’s petition will now be circulated to all active Ninth Circuit judges and any senior judge that have chosen to participate. It is likely that the the opposing party will be required to respond to the petition about why the court should not rehear the case, though they could just vote on it. The court is currently closely split with 15 Democratic and 13 Republican appointees. Odds are that sooner or later court will vote to rehear the case, but we’ll see. If it is reheard En Banc, the panel will include the Chief Judge and 10 judges selected at random.
Attorney C.D. “Chuck” Michel has a good write up here on The Truth About Guns.
Knife Rights is America’s grassroots knife owners’ organization; Rewriting Knife Law in America™ and forging a Sharper Future for all Americans™. Knife Rights efforts have resulted in 44 bills repealing knife bans in 28 states and over 175 cities and towns since 2010.