In a concurring opinion to the Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) Wolford decision, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas noted public opinion cannot block the exercise of a constitutional right.
Breitbart News reported that SCOTUS ruled 6-3 against a Hawaii gun control in Wolford, finding the limitations against licensed concealed carry on private property violated the 2nd and 14th Amendments.
Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, and Thomas used a concurring opinion to note that “The Second Amendment secures the pre-existing right of the people to have and carry weapons for their defense.”
They opined that “States may regulate the keeping and bearing of arms so long as they do not ‘infring[e]’ the right, as originally understood.”
The justices went on to explain that a state must be able to prove a given law’s constitutionality by passing Bruen’s (2022) two-step test.
Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, and Thomas then tested Hawaii’s law and found the major reason for its adoption and enforcement was that it served to reflect the majority of the Hawaiian people’s disdain for the public carrying of firearms. But such a basis is not sufficient, as the three concurring justices indicated: “While most Hawaiians might prefer that no one carry firearms in public places, a majority’s opposition to a constitutional right is not a permissible basis for restricting it. After all, ‘[t]he very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy” and “to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials.’”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. He is a lever action man in an AR-15 world. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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