“I thought you might have interest in reading our merits brief in Wolford v. Lopez which is before the Supreme Court. It was filed today and is attached to this email,” attorney Alan Beck wrote Monday.
The brief presents the question:
“Whether the Ninth Circuit erred in holding, in direct conflict with the Second Circuit, that Hawaii may presumptively prohibit the carry of handguns by licensed concealed carry permit holders on private property open to the public unless the property owner affirmatively gives express permission to the handgun carrier?”
That’s the “vampire rule,” so called because:
Just like a vampire can’t enter a home without being invited, gun owners in Hawaii can’t carry their firearms into stores, restaurants, or businesses unless the owner gives permission.
What that does is create a nearly-impossible to navigate maze of prohibited areas, clearly meant to discourage anyone outside of a state or federal enforcer from bearing arms anywhere.
Upholding Hawaii’s disarmament edict “fails every aspect of the analytical framework established by Bruen,” Beck and Petitioner Co-Counsel Mark W. Pennack argue.
“The Ninth Circuit sustained Hawaii’s default rule by relying solely on two outlier State laws separated by almost a century. One law was limited to private lands closed to the public and was a racist statute enacted by a former Confederate state prior to being readmitted to the Union and was designed to strip former slaves of their right to bear arms. The second law was a single Founding era law that the court thought was a ‘dead ringer’ but, in fact, was enacted as a hunting regulation to punish poaching on private land not held open to the public.”
That the case has gone this far (SCOTUS granted the Petition for Writ of Certiorari on Oct. 3) is testament to legal acumen, hard work, and tenaciousness of the attorneys entrusted by the plaintiffs to represent their interests and the interests of all gun owners who believe in the right to keep and bear arms. They’ve earned help because all that costs money.
“We need your continued support to pay for historians, documents, affidavits, and the mountain of legal costs to come,” the “Hawaii Sensitive Places Defense Fund” GiveSendGo page pleads. “The fact the State of Hawaii hired these big shots is proof they are scared we can win.”
When they say, “big shots,” they’re not kidding. As Rob Romano, Litigation & Intelligence Coordinator for FPC Action Foundation notes, “Hawaii’s counsel of record in this case is Neal Katyal, who has a standard hourly rate of $3,250.”
Katyal is a former Acting Solicitor General for the Obama administration, the son of Indian immigrants who is now busily eroding rights and imposing the foreign infringements they fled on the country that took his family in. Typical of Democrat cognitive dissonance between the principles they say they represent and the ones they practice, even left-of-center The New Republic condemns him and “the Depravity of Big Law, charging “The Democratic lawyer’s sickening defense of corporate immunity in a Supreme Court case reveals a growing moral rot in the legal community.”
Among its criticisms:
“It is that mutated creed that explains why Neal Katyal went to the Supreme Court … to argue that children enslaved to work on cocoa plantations should not be allowed to sue the corporations that abetted their enslavement… And last week he argued that because the corporation that supplied Zyklon B to the Nazis for use in their extermination camps was not indicted at Nuremberg, Nestle and Cargill should not be held liable for their use of child slave labor. In his argument before the court, Katyal espoused a view of corporate immunity so expansive that even the conservative judges seemed skeptical. If you took him at his word, he was effectively asking the Supreme Court to make it impossible for any foreigner to sue any company for any harm done to them, up to and including kidnapping and enslavement.”
That may help explain why Hawaii resorted to citing a former slave state disarmament law in its determination to strip freedom from all.
The state has a virtually unlimited war chest of tax plunder to draw upon. As much as the prohibitionists lie about the “gun lobby” being in the pocket of powerful blood-moneyed interests, it always seems to boil down to average gun owners (whose taxes fund their oppressors) chipping in what they can afford to ward off “legal” predation by the well-heeled.
As the Defense Fund asks, “Please donate what you can.”
Gun Control Organizations in Panic Over National Constitutional Concealed Carry
2A Foundation Fights Government’s Continuing Effort to Ban Guns At Your Post Office
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
How can this law even be effectively enforced? Do you need written, notarized documentation that the business owner granted permission? Unless the owner posts a clearly visible sign that firearms are approved on premises, it’s all a matter of he said, she said, without documentation. Even then, the sign could be removed at any point, even while you were in the business. “Your Honor, I asked the person who said he was the owner and he said it’s was okay for me to carry.” Do we need proof of business ownership to know who gave the permission? Obviously I didn’t… Read more »
One can reasonably wonder what caste Kaytal emerged from and why he may think that caste position has any relevance at all in a Constitutional Republic where all are equal before the law. Even former slaves are equal before the law. This concept may offend his theological sensibilities. If so, he needs to find a place appropriate to a caste system and not try to pervert a free republic.
I wonder if Japan would like to buy Hawaii?
Carry concealed! Don’t ask! Don’t tell!
I have a problem with allowing licensed businesses that are open to the public to ban firearms carry on their premises. Imagine a State allowing “private” businesses* to ban open signs and symbols of religious belief/affiliation – no crucifixes, no niqabs, no yarmulkes, etc. Would that be tolerated? Of course not. It would labeled an infringement upon the religious beliefs of the persons who wear such displays. But, interestingly, it would not actually affect their personal religious beliefs, which no law or act can take from them because it is in their hearts and in their minds. I think most… Read more »
UnIess they have armed guards and metaI detectors…..