Jonathan Turley fisks the Hawaii supreme court decision on guns.

On Wednesday,  in State v. Wilson,  Justice Todd Eddins wrote the decision dismissing the appeal of Christopher Wilson, who was arrested in December 2017 for publicly carrying a .22-caliber pistol in his “front waist band.” Wilson insisted that he carried the gun while hiking for self-protection.

Under Section 134-25 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes,  “all firearms” must be “confined to the possessor’s place of business, residence, or sojourn.” The only exceptions are for transporting guns in closed containers, hunting or target shooting, and for those with a license.

Wilson argued that “prosecuting him for possessing a firearm for self-defense purposes outside his home violated his right to bear arms” under the Second Amendment. While the trial court rejected his motion, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022) and Circuit Court Judge Kirstin Hamman dismissed the charges with prejudice.

Justice Eddins wrote that the Hawaii Constitution “does not afford a right to carry firearms in public places for self defense.” Eddins notes that “Article I, section 17 of the Hawaii Constitution mirrors the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.” However, “we read those words differently than the current United States Supreme Court. We hold that in Hawaii there is no state constitutional right to carry a firearm in public.” He then adds:

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

Ponder that for a moment. He even admits that the proper usage of firearms is to combat the deadly aims of others. They don’t want it, they said. While parroting stupid words about peace and tranquility, they still know that there will be deadly aims, but say that men cannot defend themselves.

They say this: “A ruling by Hawaii’s high court saying that a man can be prosecuted for carrying a gun in public without a permit cites crime-drama TV series “The Wire” and invokes the “spirit of Aloha” in an apparent rebuke of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that expanded gun rights nationwide.

“The thing about the old days, they the old days,” the unanimous Hawaii Supreme Court ruling issued Wednesday said, borrowing a quote from season four, episode three of the HBO series to express that the culture from the founding of the country shouldn’t dictate contemporary life.”

I’ve seen a number of analyses of this, from stupid, to ignorant, to childish (which of course it is), to uneducated.  Here’s the thing I think most folks are missing.

This is all by intent, and the Hawaii supreme court is doing the bidding of their masters, whomever that is. This is all being done in the Fourth Circuit, the Third Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, the Fourth Circuits, as well as numerous appeals courts before that.

Courts everywhere are daring the SCOTUS to act, and as I have said before, they are so far running like scare rabbits at the inferior courts, who are winning the day.

They have a chance to act and bring and end to all of this with a new appeal Bianchi, but will they? If they don’t, they have become irrelevant since no inferior court will listen to them on any future decision since any decision won’t carry the weight of precedent. They must be willing to stand on the 2A, censure judges, and remove judges.  Otherwise, no one will care what they say.

So will they continue to run from Bruen, Heller, Caetano and McDonald? Hawaii, New York Illinois, Delaware, Connecticut, California, Washington and other states and courts are telling the SCOTUS to go away. What will SCOTUS do?