The "crowd" was rough for both sides and I'm pretty sure that was on purpose. My guess is they really wanted to test each side to see how well it held up.
Kwikrnu, I do agree that you wanted some attention, but AFAIK, that isn't illegal. What I absolutely cannot stand is the ignorance of people that claim someone want's attention just because they are carrying a recorder. That makes just as much sense as guns have one logical purpose; to kill people.
Your lawyer did not argue the points well. Perhaps he knows better than us, but there were a lot of facts that I thought were important and were either in the court documents or you have given us here, that did not come out during oral arguments. Of course, as we've seen recently in the ACA case in front of the SCOTUS, oral arguments can mean very little.
Here is something I want to know: how far under the 12" limit does a firearm have to be to not constitute RAS? If your firearm was 11.25" would it have been obvious enough? How about 10"? 8"?
Here is another important thing: I don't think the rangers knew anything about the 12" limit until you told them. They tried to point to a number of reasons to why they stopped you. Wearing camo, holding an AK, orange tip, people scared, carrying a recorder. The problem is, none of those things in and of themselves is illegal, nor added together are they illegal.
Did this situation constitute a "chat"? Probably. But as others here have asked, what was their RAS to detain? Kwikrnu, what reason did they give you? Not afterwards, but right away? If they wanted to make sure your firearm was less than 12", why did that take 2.5 hrs? At this time, I can only come up with two answers. First, they didn't know about the limit and therefore the length of your firearm could not have created RAS, or second, you prolonged the encounter.
Good luck, for our sake.
