During oral arguments on Tuesday in the case of Wolford vs. Lopez, Justice Samuel Alito asserted that Hawaii’s gun laws diminish the Second Amendment to a “second-class status.”
According to Scott USB Blog, Alito remarked to Hawaii’s attorneys that their regulations were effectively relegating the Second Amendment to this lower status.
Roll Call reported that Chief Justice John Roberts characterized the Second Amendment as being treated like a “prejudicial right.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh commented on the absence of historical context for Hawaii’s gun control measures, suggesting, “There’s not enough history here to support regulation, so that’s the end of litigation.”
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Breitbart News highlighted that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson referred to the “Black Code” as a necessary precedent justifying Hawaii’s gun regulations, yet she later conceded that this code was “unconstitutional.”
The discussion in Roll Call further clarified the points made.
Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Samuel A. Alito Jr. voiced strong disagreement with Hawaii’s reliance on a law from 1865 that was part of the Negro Act, which aimed to disenfranchise newly freed slaves. Alito noted the irony of upholding modern legislation that referenced a law meant to disarm freedmen and render them vulnerable to the Ku Klux Klan.
Specifically regarding gun control, in this case, even licensed concealed carriers are not allowed to transport weapons on private land that is publicly accessible unless they first obtain the landowner’s permission.
This details the ongoing case of Wolford vs. Lopez, No. 23-16164, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In a related decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit invalidated a comparable gun ban in Maryland just this Tuesday.
