The question appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in Wilson v. Hawaii is whether or not the Bruen test should apply to criminal prosecutions for carrying without a license.
The Hawaii Supreme Court ruled citizens of the Aloha State do NOT have a right to carry a firearm outside the home in the state.
Hannah Hill, Director of NAGR’s legal arm, the National Foundation for Gun Rights said this in a statement:
“Hawaii’s defiance of Bruen is only different from the rest of the lower courts because Hawaii didn’t bother to give lip service to the Supreme Court’s precedent. For instance, the 7th Circuit circumvented Bruen in our lawsuit by holding that AR-15s aren’t even ‘arms’ under the Second Amendment. Our amicus brief points out that the Hawaii ruling is just the latest in a long pattern of Bruen defiance, not an outlier. Here’s hoping the Supreme Court takes swift, decisive action to end this legal anarchy and uphold the Second Amendment.”
The Hawaii Supreme Court, in their ruling, told gun owners, “the Second Amendment is not consistent with the ‘Spirit of Aloha.’”
Dudley Brown, President of the National Association for Gun Rights, rebutted:
“We searched through the Constitution, and we didn’t find ‘spirit of Aloha’ anywhere in it. What IS in the Constitution is ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ The Founders would have laughed out loud if someone had complained that the Second Amendment was inconsistent with the ‘spirit of Aloha,’ and hopefully that’s what the Supreme Court does too – along with slapping down all the other lower courts also in defiance of Bruen.”
A copy of the brief may be found here.
Read more at MyrtleBeachSC.