This is the golden age of gun-rights litigation.
And Hawaii has the next date in court.
Hawaii has intensely onerous restrictions on law-abiding citizens' exercise of the Second Amendment; it's perhaps the most restrictive state in the union; the state bans the carry of guns by law-abiding citizens on most private property unless the owner specifically allows it, via signage or verbally. Essentially, the entire state is a "felony trap" - for law-abiding citizens, anyway. The criminals don't bother with the niceties of the law.
Much less the niceties of a Hawaii high court ruling whose legal theory was apparently cribbed from the Hawaii Chamber of Commerce:
Hawaii’s Supreme Court said the Second Amendment doesn’t apply because of the “Spirit of Aloha,” whatever the hell that means.
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) July 26, 2024
It’s just another way these anti-rights clowns are trying to justify violating our rights; they can fuck right off. pic.twitter.com/UKspS9Pkbb
What? You think I made that up?
LEGAL ALERT: More than two years after oral arguments, the Ninth Circuit has struck down Hawaii's short handgun permit validity and in-person firearm inspection requirements, saying they violate the Second Amendment. https://t.co/S9Mf8YkYei pic.twitter.com/Ely6yDnB5x
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) March 14, 2025
And this past Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to take up a case challenging the law - a challenge that was upheld by a district court, and then shot down by the infamously anti-gun Ninth Circuit:
A judge blocked the Hawaii law after it was challenged in court by a gun rights group and three people from Maui. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely reversed that decision and allowed Hawaii to enforce the law.
The gun-safety group Everytown urged the court to uphold the measure. “The Ninth Circuit was absolutely right to say it’s constitutional to prohibit guns on private property unless the owner says they want guns there,” said Janet Carter, managing director of Second Amendment litigation.
Apparently, "Spirit of Aloha" is Hawaiian for "spirit of trying to end-run the Bruen decision", the 2022 case that ruled the Second Amendment conferred a legal right to be armed outside one's home for self-defense purposes (shaddap about hunting already). And plaintiffs on the islands were not amused:
Under the new standard, courts must ask whether the “Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct?” If the answer is yes, it next must ask whether there exists a “historical precedent from before, during and even after the founding [that] evidences a comparable tradition of regulation?”
After the ruling, many states with anti-gun legislatures began passing “Bruen response” laws trying to sidestep the ruling while still infringing on the Second Amendment rights of their citizens. One such was Hawaii, where lawmakers quickly passed a law forbidding carry on private property open to the public, such as restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores, without the property owner’s express consent.
Gun owners quickly filed a lawsuit, Wolford v. Lopez, challenging the law. While a district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals later reversed that ruling, finding that the law doesn’t run afoul of Second Amendment protections.
Hawaii's gun grab groups are predictably outraged:
“It’s just very disappointing to me that the Supreme Court would even attempt to overturn the will of the people and the people that we elect to represent us,” said Erica Yamauchi of the Hawaii Chapter of Moms Demand Action.
“While we continue to have pretty low gun violence rates overall compared to other states, that’s really only due to sound historic public policy that we’ve had,” she added.
Hawaii's low crime rate has a lot more to do with having a small, fairly socially cohesive population (there's where that "spirit of aloha" might come in) than with gun bans, which don't seem to have made New York City, Newark, Camden, Washington DC, or Chicago into metaphorical days at the beach.
