SAF AMICUS BRIEF SUPPORTS SCOTUS REVIEW OF HAWAII 2A REJECTION

News Release from SAF, June 19, 2024

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has filed an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting Hawaii resident Christopher L. Wilson’s petition for a writ of certiorari in his challenge of the Hawaii state Supreme Court’s decree that individual citizens in the Aloha State do not have the right to carry firearms for self-defense outside of their homes.

SAF is represented in its effort by attorneys Edward A. Paltzik, Serge Krimnus and Meredith Lloyd at Bochner PLLC in New York, N.Y.

“When the Hawaii Supreme Court brazenly declared in February that the Second Amendment essentially does not exist within the state,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “we were stunned. This declaration is so astonishing in its nature that the U.S. Supreme Court simply cannot allow one-tenth of the Bill of Rights to be arbitrarily erased. Hawaii is still part of the United States. It is not a police state.”

“The Hawaii court has reduced an established right protected by the federal Constitution,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “This is nothing short of open rebellion against the Supremacy Clause. Lawless judicial activism of such an extreme nature, if left undisturbed, would set a dangerous precedent that State supreme courts are free to tunnel below the constitutional floor of the Second Amendment. Millions of peaceable, law-abiding adults would be deprived of their fundamental right to carry firearms in public for self-defense based on geographical luck of the draw. As a consequence of such chaos, the Second Amendment would be rendered dead letter.”

In its petition, SAF makes clear the Second Amendment is not a “second-class right” subject to the political and philosophical whims of state Supreme Courts. The “Aloha Spirit” does not trump the U.S. Constitution. This is a non-negotiable matter of federalism.

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NAGR files Amicus Brief with the Supreme Court in "Spirit of Aloha" Wilson v. Hawaii Case

News Release from National Association for Gun Rights, June 14, 2024

Washington, D.C. - The National Association for Gun Rights filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court today in the case of Wilson v. Hawaii, a prosecution for carrying a handgun without a license. The Hawaii Supreme Court said that “The spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities.” The question appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court is whether or not the Bruen test should apply to criminal prosecutions for carrying without a license. The brief may be found here.

“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,” said Hannah Hill, Executive Director of the National Foundation for Gun Rights.

NAGR has appealed the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling upholding the Illinois so-called “Assault Weapons” Ban, a ruling that found AR-15s are not even “arms” under the Second Amendment. This appeal for certiorari is currently pending before the Supreme Court.

The amicus brief points out the grave Constitutional implications of a state court’s defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s authority, but also reminds the Justices that Hawaii simply followed the example of numerous lower courts across the country which have circumvented Bruen’s plain holdings in order to uphold unconstitutional gun bans.

Quote from the brief: “Despite Bruen’s admonition, the lower courts have continued to treat the right to keep and bear arms as a second-class right. NAGR hopes the Court will use this case to send a forceful rebuke to these courts lest ‘anarchy [] prevail within the federal judicial system.’”

“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,” said Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights.

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The National Association for Gun Rights is the nation’s largest “no compromise” pro-gun organization, with 4.5 million members nationwide.

Feb 9, 2024: 'Spirit of Aloha' Hawaii Supreme Court gun ruling brings praise and ridicule

Feb 8, 2024: Hawaii Supreme Court Rejects Major Second Amendment Rulings in New Gun-Carry Decision