My thoughts
I hate to be the first to argue about something fairly trivial in the wake of something so important, but I believe it should not have gotten that far, and I have yet to see anyone account for a law that proves otherwise.
James Goldberg should have been able to reply "Yes, I have a permit" and the police should have left him alone after witnessing no crime and after the manager of Chili's could not articulate a specific crime.
I still have yet to see anywhere in CT state law where it requires you to hand over any physical identification to a LEO when you are not breaking a law.
But what's the point of a permit, then? I think most people feel that the police should be able to stop and ask for information, which citizens should be required to give. This feeling doesn't have a basis in law, which creates much of the disconnect between "reasonable" and "legal", some of which we can see in the judge's statements. Maybe there really is no point to a permit, if the police can't ask for it unless you've already probably committed a crime with your gun, and that crime can't be simply carrying it somewhere not prohibited by law.
I wonder what the outcome would have been if someone called and said "There's a man with a fishing pole and a fish, and I'm afraid!" The vast majority of CT residents don't have fishing permits, so it's entirely likely that a person with a fishing pole and a fish has been fishing illegally. Would police be justified in responding to such a call, and asking for the possible fisher's permit? And in temporarily seizing the fishing pole in case the suspect uses it against the police?
This argumentation about police temporarily taking a person's weapon and handcuffing the person is a very slippery slope. Why don't they handcuff everyone, in case people find a weapon at hand like a piece of furniture? Or even if the person doesn't have a weapon but fights bare-handed? Where's the line? If the police can handcuff people when they ask them questions, for their own safety, can they just indiscriminately handcuff everyone because everyone is a potential danger?
In a way I feel sorry for the police. If they respond as they should, meaning that the dispatcher informs the caller that unless the person is making threats using the gun or is unsafely handling the gun there isn't a problem and that's the end of the matter, then the media will be all over them for not responding to calls about possible armed criminals. If they respond as many people would like and show up to harrass someone acting legally and responsibly, they violate laws and rights. No real winning solution for them, there.
Like the issue of suitability, this vagueness in law or in the understanding of law that says the context of an action when perceived by "reasonable" people is creating a big problem. If the law were even clearer than it is, and the relevant statutes were updated to say that mere possession of a weapon, visibly or not, is not sufficient to constitute assault or threatening, it would help prevent a lot of these cases. Yes, I know that's like printing "Caution, hot drink" on a coffee cup, but that's apparently the kind of society we're in nowadays.
Perhaps we also ought to print things like "if someone does something which scares you, get out, or at least get a hold of your emotions and ask that person to stop, realizing that they might not." Having fear is not the same as being threatened. I think Ed Peruta's statement about Muslims makes that point very clear. The presence of a Muslim is enough to make some people afraid because of their ignorance, in just the same way and for the same reason that guns do for other people. I hope that Ms. Baird, or whoever argues this case on appeal, brings up that example because it's even more analagous than the "black person in a white neighborhood" idea.
I have to wonder about the judge's reasoning when he implies that Goldberg should have left his gun in the car rather than taking it in to the restaurant. There is, of course, the common sense logic that we who are familiar and comfortable with guns would bring up, that since Chili's is apparently a place where armed criminals have repeatedly caused trouble it's a good place to be armed and that one could find the need to defend oneself in an instant in any place. Aside from that, even the judge would have to admit that the act of drawing his firearm in his car to put it away, if observed by someone, would be definite reason to call 911 and a definite breach of peace. So by this logic, apparently everyone who carries a firearm needs to also carry a sort of changing booth which allows them to disarm without causing alarm.
I completely agree with Ed that the solution to this legal ambivalence is more clarification of the laws. If even respected judges can't see through their emotions on these topics, we need to make it so clear that they can't deny what the law says. Perhaps that's futile, given the kinds of irrational fears some people have about guns.