prosecuting attorney

The state Department of the Attorney General is coordinating with county prosecutors, corporation counsels and police to develop a process for licensing gun owners who apply for a permit to carry a handgun after the US Supreme Court last week said lower courts should revisit Hawaii’s restrictions on who can pack a gun in public.

The Supreme Court on Thursday said gun cases involving restrictions in Hawaii, California, New Jersey and Maryland deserve a new look following its major decision in a New York gun case June 23. In light of that ruling — which said Americans have a right to carry a gun for self-defense outside the home — the court said lower courts should take another look at several cases that had been pending action by the high court.

The justices, in a 6-3 decision, struck down a New York law that required people to show “proper cause,” a specific need to carry a gun, if they wanted to carry a gun in public.

Hawaii has similar restrictions, and police chiefs here have granted only four permits to carry a gun in public in the last 22 years. The Supreme Court decision takes away the chiefs’ ability to deny qualified, law-abiding citizens a permit to carry a handgun.

The court on Thursday granted a petition in the case George K. Young Jr. v. Hawaii stemming from a 2012 lawsuit against the Hawaii County Police Department filed by Young, a retired police officer, who had his application to carry a gun turned down twice.

Young’s case was sent back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for further consideration of its 2021 ruling that the right to “keep and bear arms” in the Constitution’s Second Amendment “does not