The US Supreme Court is reviewing Wolford v. Lopez, a major Second Amendment case that challenges Hawaii’s new state law that requires concealed-carry permit holders to obtain express permission before carrying firearms onto private property open to the public, including stores, restaurants, and shopping malls.
Gun-rights advocates call the law the “Vampire Rule,” because it reverses longstanding American law by presuming firearms are prohibited on private property unless a property owner specifically allows them. The rule effectively bans public carry in practice.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Hawaii’s law, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari (review) in October. Merits briefing concluded in November, with amicus briefs filed by the US Department of Justice, the National Rifle Association, and other gun-rights organizations that oppose the statute as incompatible with New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
To defend the law under the Supreme Court’s Bruen’s “history-and-tradition” test, Hawaii relied on firearm regulations from the 19th-century Kingdom of Hawaii, before annexation and statehood. These laws restricted the carrying of certain deadly weapons, and the state argues they demonstrate a longstanding local tradition of firearm regulation that supports the state-imposed consent requirement.
Hawaii is elevating pre-statehood history of a monarchy over the national constitutional tradition that governs the Second Amendment. Under Bruen, they argue, states may not justify modern gun restrictions by cherry-picking regional or colonial outliers rather than looking to the historical understanding of the right at the time the Constitution was adopted.
Hawaii does not contend that the Kingdom of Hawaii banned firearms entirely, nor does it even argue that the Second Amendment fails to apply to the state. The dispute centers on whether Hawaii’s modern restrictions are consistent with the nation’s historical understanding of that right.
Hawaii’s gun laws have other vagaries. The 2024 Hawaii Supreme Court decision, State v. Wilson interpreted the state constitution rather than federal law. In that case, the court also relied heavily on Kingdom-era history and invoked the “spirit of Aloha” to conclude that Hawaii’s constitution does not recognize an individual right to bear arms, instead recognizing only a collective militia-related right.
That ruling suggested that the modern expansion of Second Amendment rights recognized by the Supreme Court clashes with Hawaii’s cultural values and public-safety traditions.
The Wilson decision, however, has no direct legal bearing on Wolford v. Lopez, which is governed exclusively by federal Second Amendment precedent. The Supreme Court supersedes state courts as the final arbiter of the scope of the Second Amendment.
Hawaii’s reliance on Kingdom-era laws arose from a monarchy and colonial governance structure, not from a constitutional system grounded in individual liberty.
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