The early indications are that the state of Hawaii will be very disappointed with the outcome of the Supreme Court case challenging its so-called vampire rule. This is the rule that says you can’t carry a concealed weapon into a business open to the public unless express permission is granted.
That’s good news, not just for Hawaiians, but for everyone else dealing with such laws.
However, I don’t think Hawaii should be overly surprised by that. After all, when your arguments look like this, what else can you expect?
“Hawai‘i’s unique history—including its long pre-statehood existence as an independent kingdom—means that its residents never developed a practice of bringing guns into shops, convenience stores, and the like,” state Attorney General Anne Lopez wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court in December.
Alan Beck, a San Diego-based attorney who is representing the plaintiffs, says bringing the history of the Hawaiian Kingdom into the argument is invalid.
“What they’re really arguing is that the rights of my clients, who are U.S. citizens, should be dictated by the laws of a monarchy,” he said. “That’s not a position that’s really tenable.”
…
In Hawaiʻi’s brief, Attorney General Anne Lopez cites an 1833 law from the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, when King Kamehameha III banned anyone from possessing any type of deadly weapon.
When the kingdom was overthrown in 1893, the provisional government banned the importation of guns and ammunition, the brief says. Three years later, the government passed a law prohibiting carrying or using a gun without a license and strictly regulating who could get a license.
“Similarly tight gun restrictions remained in place until Hawai‘i became a state in 1959,” the brief says. “There is no indication that, after statehood, Hawai‘i’s residents developed a custom of armed carry at odds with the pre-statehood norms.”
The Bruen decision may not have made everything clear, but it did explicitly state that gun control laws considered as part of the nation’s history and tradition had to date from either the founding era or when the 14th Amendment was ratified. Those are the only two applicable time periods, and that’s because those laws existing at those times would suggest that those who enshrined both the Second and 14th Amendments intended laws such as those to be constitutional.
Nothing about that talks about Hawaii’s “unique culture” or its time as a kingdom.
See, something we need to remember about the United States is that we’re basically a nation of around 50 smaller nations, at least culturally speaking. While there are overlaps aplenty, the culture in Atlanta, Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee aren’t exactly the same. Texas is different culturally from Louisiana. Alaska has a very different culture from Washington state. New England and the Deep South are culturally very different.
If we’re going to talk about “unique cultures,” then literally every state has its own culture that can be brought to the table.
Hell, the Deep South had a culture that involved slavery, and we see where that went. This was a good thing because, despite some of the Founding Fathers’ views on the subject, slavery isn’t compatible with a constitution predicated on preserving liberty for all.
That’s because rights don’t depend on culture. A state’s tradition doesn’t override the basic constitutionally protected freedoms our Founding Fathers intended all free men to enjoy. They didn’t get everything right, but until certain parties can get enough support to replace the Constitution forever, that vision still applies.
How did Hawaii think that invoking King Kamehameha III would be a winning argument before the same Supreme Court that wrote the Bruen decision? Did they suddenly think that Justice Clarence Thomas forgot the standard he put to paper, or that he wouldn’t remind everyone else of what they’d previously decided?
Honestly, this is the “aloha spirit” we’d previously heard from the state, a belief that their state is exempt from the overall national traditions just because they’re newer.
They don’t get to override people’s rights just because people haven’t really had them as they should have before. Anyone who thought that was a valid argument is too stupid to practice law.
They’re too stupid to practice finger painting, if we’re being honest.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.
Read the full article here
