BehindBlueI's
Grandmaster
- Oct 3, 2012
- 26,608
- 113
As I've said before, there should be some penalty for something like this.
They can't 'overrule" the Supreme Court.
Someone posted the exact verbiage up thread, but to re-iterate they specifically stated they were doing so:
We read those words differently than the current United States Supreme Court. We hold that in Hawaiʻi there is no state constitutional right to carry a firearm in public.
Lawyers play semantics for a living, and note they say "state right", referring to their own state constitution vs the 2nd amendment SCOTUS decided on.
Also of interest:
Bruen snubs federalism principles. Still, the United States Supreme Court does not strip states of all sovereignty to pass traditional police power laws designed to protect people.
Of some interest for different reasons, the defendent was trespassing on someone else's property. That someone else was Ting. Ting had a rifle:
Ting reported the matter to the Maui Police Department. Officers headed to Ting’s property. Meanwhile Ting, driving an all-terrain vehicle, corralled Wilson and his three companions. Armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, he detained them until the police arrived.
So nobody batted an eye at Ting's AR-15, which actually surprises me a bit.
Reading on, I'm not so sure it's the slam dunk overturn on appeal that the media report would make it seem:
First, the Second Amendment allows for some restrictions per Heller and Bruen. For instance, registration and permitting are constitutional. Second, unlike the Bruen plaintiffs, Wilson illegally possessed a handgun because he never tried to follow Hawaiʻi’s firearm registration and license to carry law. Because he didn’t apply for a permit, he lacks standing to raise a Second Amendment challenge.
It goes on, but basically the court didn't reject his second amendment issues, they said he lacked standing to challenge them because he illegally owned the gun to begin with, never attempted to get a permit so he can't challenge permit laws, and lied about where he got the gun and was committing another crime at the time. While I find Hawaii's rules overly burdensome and not in line with the 2nd amendment (I didn't bother to carry there because I didn't want to deal with registering my gun with the police for a more-than-5-day-visit), I'm not sure they got the technicality that he's not the one who can complain wrong. I'm not saying they didn't, mind you, I'm just saying it's not nearly as clear cut as first blush made it seem.