The Supreme Court Defends Its Bruen Decision, Refusing Hawaii's Insistence That the "Spirit of Aloha" Overrides the 2nd Amendment

Hawaii claims "the spirit of Aloha" allows them to do a lot of things, like discriminate in favor of native-born Hawaiians over newcomers. Maybe this will serve as a precedent for a ruling knocking down that racial discrimination.

But for the moment, the Supreme Court has ruled that Hawaii's "spirit of Aloha" does not grant the racist state
special license to deny American citizens their second amendment rights.

And the states of California, Maryland, NJ, and NY will likewise have to accept that the Supreme Court meant what it said when it reaffirmed that Americans generally have the right to self-defense.

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Hawaii law that makes it a crime for gun owners to bring their guns onto private property that is open to the public unless they have the property owner's specific consent. In Wolford v. Lopez, by a vote of 6-3, the justices agreed with a group of Maui residents with concealed-carry permits that the law violates the Second Amendment's guarantee of the right to bear arms.

Thursday's decision will have an impact not only in Hawaii, but also in four other states -- California, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey -- with similar laws.

In his 24-page opinion for the court, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the law "hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives." Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who dissented, countered that the law "fairly applies a first principle of property law--the right to exclude--and does no harm to the Second Amendment."

Hawaii passed the law in 2023, just under one year after the Supreme Court's decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In Bruen, the court invalidated a New York handgun-licensing law that required state residents who wanted to carry a handgun in public to show that they had a special need to defend themselves. The court also made clear that the Second Amendment protects a broad right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. In his opinion for the majority in Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas emphasized that courts should uphold gun restrictions only if they are "consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."

Before Hawaii's ban could go into effect, three Maui residents with concealed-carry permits, as well as a local gun-rights group, went to federal court to challenge the law. A federal appeals court upheld the ban, finding that there was likely "a national tradition ... of prohibiting the carrying of firearms on private property without the owner's oral or written consent."

The challengers then went to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to weigh in. The court agreed to do so in October and heard oral argument in January.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court reversed. Alito found it clear that the Hawaii law fell within "the plain text of the Second Amendment" and was therefore "presumptively unconstitutional." "No party," he wrote, "disputes that" the challengers in the case "are among 'the people' protected by the Second Amendment or that they seek to 'bear,' i.e., to carry, 'arms.'" Alito stressed that the Hawaii law "unquestionably imposed a new and significant burden on the exercise of the right" to bear arms.

He acknowledged that under the Hawaii law, property owners can still "admit or exclude" gun owners "who are carrying guns for self-defense." But the difference between the Hawaii law and the default rule elsewhere in the country -- that gun owners with concealed-carry permits can enter private property open to the public "unless expressly prohibited from doing so" -- "will determine where carry-permit holders may lawfully carry firearms," Alito said, when "the owner either pays no attention or does not care about such issues."

Note that the Court says that property owners can in fact exclude guns from their property -- but the state can't make it a crime to bring guns to someone's property, if that property owner hasn't said anything about guns either way.

The key question before the court, in his view, was whether there was a history of similar regulations in early U.S. and English history. Alito first rejected Hawaii's contention that, "whatever the situation in other parts of the country, in Hawaii, opening private property to the public" does not give permission to bring a gun onto that property. Alito countered that "the Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States," where there is "'overwhelming evidence'" of "an 'enduring American tradition permitting public carry.'"

...

Alito also strongly spurned the state's reliance on "an 1865 Louisiana statute that made it unlawful 'for any person or persons to carry fire-arms on the premises or plantations of any citizens,'" without the owner's consent, calling it "remarkable." That law was "neither widespread nor widely accepted," Alito contended, and in any event, it was adopted as part of the "so-called Black Codes" to discriminate against formerly enslaved people in the wake of the Civil War. "Hawaii's claim that this tainted artifact illuminates the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms cannot be taken seriously."

Citing "Black Codes" to justify your gun-grabbing? For shame, Hawaii. For shame.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:33 PM

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