Hawaii's Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a decades-old Supreme Court precedent that held there was no state constitutional right to carry firearms.
court is wednesday ruling Rejecting three landmark Second Amendment Supreme Court decisions, New York State Rifle Association v. Bruen, McDonald v. City of Chicago, and District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held “We are carefully selecting history.” ” The Hawaii Supreme Court's decision overturned a lower court's decision to dismiss charges against Christopher Wilson for possessing an unregistered gun in the state. claimed Violated Second Amendment rights under Bruen.
“The traditional style of interpretation and historical tradition of Hawaii's firearms regulation eliminates an individual's right to keep and bear arms under the Hawaii Constitution,” the ruling said. “There is no state constitutional right to carry a firearm in public in Hawaii.” (Related: Hawaii Supreme Court judge handling case against oil companies calls climate change an 'existential threat')
The court rejected a “Founding-era” understanding of the Constitution, citing a line from the TV series “The Wire” that goes, “Those days were, those of old.”
“At a time when the world is changing, it makes no sense for modern societies to pledge allegiance to the culture, realities, laws, and constitutional understandings of the founding era,” the ruling said.
Carrie Severino, president of the conservative legal advocacy group JCN, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Hawaii Supreme Court made a mistake.
“The Hawaii Supreme Court made a mistake in narrowing U.S. Constitutional rights, but the U.S. Supreme Court can and should right it,” she said. “Whether they like it or not, state Supreme Court justices rely as much on history as they do on attempts to distinguish between Wilson and Bruen in order to escape the decisions that bind them.'' do not have.”
The Hawaii Supreme Court issued a decision that Everytown seemed to have written for them. They claim that Heller's decision was wrong and talk about the historical traditions of the former Hawaiian kingdom as if it had something to do with it.
Lowlight thread. pic.twitter.com/NC7ZDVmsJd
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) February 7, 2024
At one point, the opinion argued that the “spirit of aloha” violated the Second Amendment.
“The spirit of aloha conflicts with a federally mandated lifestyle that allows citizens to walk around with deadly weapons in their everyday lives,” the ruling states. “The history of the Hawaiian Islands does not include societies in which armed people moved through communities to fight the deadly aims of others.”
It goes on to say that “the unfettered right to carry firearms in public violates other constitutional rights.”
Bill Shipley, attorney and former federal prosecutor I got it. The court could have added “a single sentence” after explaining its position that it must “nevertheless” uphold the lower court's decision to follow the Supreme Court's precedent.
“Even if they didn't like it, they could have gone on a 50-page rant while respecting their place in the constitutional order,” he wrote to X. “Instead, they just lit themselves on fire.”
“This means the Supreme Court's power to declare that federal law is binding on all states, and its refusal to accept the supremacy of the Supremacy Clause, whether the states agree or not. and lawless,” he wrote.
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