Hawaii Supreme Court Rolls Back Individual Firearm Rights for Violating 'Spirit of Aloha'
It seems as if Hawaii is going out of its way to demonstrate the utter contempt with which blue cities hold our constitutional rights.
Specifically, the Hawaii Supreme Court has decided that the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which grants American citizens the right to bear arms, must take a back seat to the island state’s “spirit of Aloha.”
No, this isn’t a mediocre SNL skit — this is Hawaii’s reasoning for denying a man his Second Amendment rights.
This bizarre justification comes from the opinion of a recent Hawaii Supreme Court case, Hawaii v. Wilson.
As reported in The Reload, in this case the Hawaii Supreme Court reversed the decision of a lower court, which ruled that the charges Christopher Wilson faced for carrying a gun without a permit violated his rights.
Conservative media outlet Mediaite reported that Hawaii’s decision is directly contrary to recent decisions from the United States Supreme Court, such as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, wherein the Supreme Court ruled that New York’s stipulation of a “special need” to be able to obtain a gun permit was unconstitutional.
In the opinion explaining the Hawaii Supreme Court’s judgment, the text of which was shared on X (formerly Twitter) by the Firearms Policy Coalition, the justices first decided that hundreds of years of legal precedent regarding the Second Amendment is just wrong.
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
They instead write that Article I, Section 17 of the Hawaiʻi 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 Hawaiʻi there is no state constitutional right to carry a firearm in public.”
Considering the highest court in the land upholds just the opposite, it’s unclear how the Hawaii Supreme Court can just decide that’s not what the Second Amendment means.
The Second Amendment clearly states that “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,” and 200 plus years of legislation have supported the interpretation that it means ordinary citizens have that right to arm themselves.
But let’s proceed to the most infamous passage of this opinion.
The justices wrote “The spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities. The history of the Hawaii Islands does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others.”
Too many courts have upheld unconstitutional decisions with flimsy logic, but this might be the worst.
For one, the Hawaii Supreme Court never actually defines what this “spirit of Aloha” even is, nor gives anything like a decent legal argument as to why this amorphous “spirit” should supersede the clear text of the Second Amendment and its interpretive history.
For another, what gave the Hawaii Supreme Court the right to contradict the highest court in the land on such a baseless premise?
Their argument is laughable, and flies in the face of SCOTUS precedent.
The point, it seems, was not to make an equitable decision in line with constitutional principles, but to use the limited authority of the state Supreme Court to deprive citizens of their right to bear arms.
Leftist have a curious distaste for the idea of an armed populace, and the recent SCOTUS decisions in favor of citizens acquiring firearms have left them seething.
As we see in this case in Hawaii, our rights as citizens are under attack from all sides, especially in blue states.
Blue state gun owners face attacks to their rights from both the federal and state governments, and the situation is only marginally better in red states, unless red state governors take an explicit stance in favor of the Second Amendment.
And, as we see in this case, most blue states won’t even have the decency to give you a good reason for taking away your rights.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
