For as long as the United States has existed, one of our most foundational and fundamental rights has been to individually “keep and bear arms.” And yet, Hawaii just decided you don’t actually have that right.
According to The Reload, Christopher Wilson was arrested and brought to court on charges of carrying a gun without a permit. While this is indeed, illegal, especially in the very blue state of Hawaii, a lower court decided that he does still have the right to do so, according to the US Constitution’s Second Amendment.
However, the Hawaii Supreme Court just reversed that decision, basically stating that the Constitution takes a back seat to their state’s “spirit of Aloha.”
The Hawaii Supreme Court reversed the dismissal of charges for carrying without a permit today, saying that Heller and Bruen were wrongly decided and the state's right to bear arms isn't an individual right: https://t.co/UpgspZ3dUJ pic.twitter.com/N4vkHUCxVM
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) February 7, 2024
As the clearly leftist Supreme Court justices wrote, Article I, Section 17 of Hawaii’s Constitution “mirrors the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. We read those words differently than the current United States Supreme Court. We hold that in Hawai’i, there is no state constitutional right to carry a firearm in public.”
Yes, you read that correctly.
A state Supreme Court has just ruled that you don’t have the right to carry a firearm, despite what 200 or so years of legal precedence in every other American state has upheld.
And why? Well, because they interpret the text of the Constitution differently.
There are obviously several problems with this verdict.
One is that, as I mentioned before, there is no precedence of denying an individual their Second Amendment rights – and especially not just because a state tends to disagree with how the federal government is currently reading it.
As you know, the Second Amendment states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
I don’t know how you could interpret that to mean anything but what it has to nearly every US citizen over more than 200 years.
And yet, the justices say this “clashes” with their “spirit of Aloha,” which is not defined by the court beyond more than saying that Hawaii does not have a history “where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others.”
I mean, this is almost laughable, if the justices weren’t serious. Luckily enough, based on all the reasons above, it’s unlikely to stand.
