Hawaii's Concealed-Carry Law Overturned by Supreme Court, Liberal Justices Dissent.
The Supreme Court has sided with three Hawaii residents in a key gun rights case, overturning a law that barred concealed-carry permit holders from exercising their rights in public. The 6-3 ruling was met with dissent from all three liberal justices, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The court's decision was based on a law enacted in 1865, part of the post-Civil War Black Codes, which made it illegal to carry firearms onto another person's property without the owner's consent. This law was enacted by racist white Democrats in Louisiana, fearing an armed black populace.
Attorney Kevin O'Grady, who represented the plaintiffs, stated that it is "disgraceful" for any state to rely on a law aimed at taking away the Second Amendment rights of Black Americans. However, Justice Jackson had a different take in her dissent, arguing that the court ignored an important constitutional question.
Jackson claimed the Court should have first decided whether the Louisiana law itself violated the Second Amendment or if the real constitutional problem was that it was enforced in a racially discriminatory way. She argued that under the Supreme Court's Bruen framework, the Court could not simply dismiss those laws without first explaining why they should not count as historical evidence.
Pro-Second Amendment experts were quick to note where Jackson went wrong. Hannah Hill, vice president of the National Association of Gun Rights, stated that Justice Alito pointed out in the majority ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted in response to these types of laws, which deprived Americans of their fundamental rights.
Tyler Yzaguirre, president of Second Amendment Institute, agreed with Hill, stating that the court was right to reject the notion that such laws could define the historical limits of the Second Amendment. Yzaguirre emphasized that those laws were not legitimate expressions of the Nation's constitutional tradition but rather examples of government using its power to deprive Americans of a fundamental right.
