Hawaii is Blue. If not for California, it would likely be the progressive poster child for failed policy. It is run by statists who appoint statist judges, but in an odd twist, the State’s Supreme Court has discovered federalism … as an excuse to deny an individual right.
In a February 7th ruling, the high court announced that it did not have to listen to the US Supreme Court or any precedent related to its interpretation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
Christopher Wilson was arrested seven years ago for carrying a handgun for protection while hiking. Being in Hawaii, he was charged with multiple firearms violations and introduced to the tedious and expensive court system. Hawaii does not allow you to carry outside “the home if you are able to get permission to carry at all. Seven years later the State’s highest court has ruled against Wilson.
“We reject Wilson’s constitutional challenges. Conventional interpretive modalities and [Hawaii’s] historical tradition of firearm regulation rule out an individual right to keep and bear arms under the [Hawaii] Constitution.”
Jacob Sullum, writing at Reason, observes (with reference to District of Columbia v. Heller, McDonald v. Chicago, and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, that,
The Hawaii Supreme Court thinks all of those cases were wrongly decided. In a ruling issued on Wednesday, the court sides with the Heller dissenters by embracing the view that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”—unlike “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” (protected by the First Amendment), “the right of the people” to be secure from “unreasonable searches and seizures” (protected by the Fourth Amendment), and the unspecified rights “retained by the people” under the Ninth Amendment—does not refer to an individual right. Rather, the Hawaii Supreme Court says, the Second Amendment involves a “collective right” that is relevant only in the context of militia service.
It appears to me that Hawaii’s “historical” tradition is to selectively acknowledge rights as individual or collective based on partisan political interest. The very reason why we have a Federal Constitution, which Hawaii accepted as the highest law of the land when it joined the nation. And yes, we can have endless conversations about courts and constitutions and not following those words or these words or the vagaries of time and definitions, and it’s all legitimate grist for that mill. But at its simplest, you shouldn’t either see all the natural rights as an individual or none of them and make that case to the people so they can vote accordingly.
That’s not how any of it works because while there is some ground-level momentum toward collectivism in regard to rights like free speech, we still have some way to go to see the whole stable subdued by the creeping Marxists who love the word federalism if they can use it to deny people rights.
You can find a lot of inside baseball and background on State v. Wilson here if you like getting into the weeds.
