US Appeals Court Decides Americans Have The Right To Carry Guns In Public

A United States appeals court has made the decision that thanks to the Constitution, Americans have the right to open carry a gun in public for the purpose of self-defense if they choose to. This is in response to Hawaii’s declaration that gun rights only apply when a person is at home.

The ruling was issued by a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, reported Reuters. It came a year after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule either way on the carrying of guns in public.

Two of the three 9th Circuit judges voted to reverse a decision by the U.S. District Court in Hawaii that state officials did not infringe on the rights of George Young, the plaintiff, in twice denying him a permit to carry a gun outside. “We do not take lightly the problem of gun violence,” Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote in Tuesday’s ruling. “But, for better or for worse, the Second Amendment does protect a right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense.”

This will do little to stop the debate about whether or not the government should be in control of all the guns. It may also help to clarify that the Second Amendment to the Constitution doesn’t grant anyone the right to self-defense.  That right is everyone’s given to them by virtue of being born human beings.