The Patriot Post® · Hawaii Bids 'Aloha' to the Second Amendment

“The spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities.”

So wrote a rogue Hawaii Supreme Court last Wednesday in a decision that could have profound implications for the citizens of our 50th state. By rejecting the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent Second Amendment rulings in Heller and especially Bruen, and by upholding a conviction for island resident Christopher Wilson — who was charged in 2017 with carrying a loaded gun without a concealed weapons permit — Hawaii’s high court thumbed its nose at the primacy of both the U.S. Constitution and the Supreme Court that interprets the meaning of our governing document.

Hawaii’s Supreme Court continued, “The history of the Hawaiian Islands does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others,” adding, “The United States Supreme Court disables the states’ responsibility to protect public safety, reduce gun violence, and safeguard peaceful public movement.”

Perhaps the Hawaiian court couldn’t bear to be upstaged by its Colorado counterpart, whose recent cockamamie ruling was that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist and is therefore ineligible to run for president. If that’s the case, then a ruling that our nation’s Second Amendment doesn’t apply to Hawaiians is just what the doctor ordered. As Fox News reports: “In the ruling, which was penned by Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins, the court determined that states ‘retain the authority to require’ individuals to hold proper permits before carrying firearms in public. The decision also concluded that the Hawaii Constitution broadly ‘does not afford a right to carry firearms in public places for self defense.’”

As for the solemn legal principle that these learned justices cited as justification for this usurpation — namely, “the Spirit of Aloha” — we can’t figure out how a friendly “Aloha” is supposed to keep that totalitarian boot from stamping on our human faces forever.

“We read those words differently than the current United States Supreme Court,” wrote Eddins and his fellow travelers. “We hold that in Hawaii there is no state constitutional right to carry a firearm in public.”

Don’t get us wrong: We used to watch “Hawaii Five-0” when we were growing up, and we hope to one day visit that earthly island paradise. But we’ll be a lot less inclined to do so if the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply and if the people’s fundamental right to self-defense is forced to take a back seat to a toothless cultural custom.

Former Hawaii congresswoman and Democrat presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who has since left the party and declared her independence, expressed her newfound appreciation for the Second Amendment in a November 2022 Substack essay:

President Biden relentlessly pushes for gun confiscation and reinstating the assault weapons ban. Meanwhile, they are politicizing Federal agencies like the Department of Justice and Homeland Security, and using them to target law-abiding Americans who oppose the radical so-called woke agenda of this Administration. They are dangerously showing their authoritarian instincts through their rhetoric, policies, and actions — undermining our God-given freedoms enshrined in the Constitution at every turn.

Gabbard’s thoughts here are prescient. It’s as if she’d envisioned the Hawaii Supreme Court’s ruling 15 months in advance. Moreover, it’s as if she’d read former Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution because the point she makes about the authoritarian instincts of those in power is precisely what Story is talking about in perhaps his most trenchant observation about the Second Amendment: “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”

“Freedom,” said Governor Ronald Reagan in his 1967 inaugural address to the people of California, “is a fragile thing, and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.”

It’s unclear whether the people of Hawaii are willing to fight for and defend their Second Amendment rights, but they’re lucky to have an appeals process that allows it. While the know-it-alls on the Hawaii Supreme Court might think they’re above the law, they’ll learn soon enough that they aren’t. And they’ll learn, too, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.