By Dave Workman
ANALYSIS: In her concurring opinion in Wolford v. Lopez, Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett sent a signal to American gun prohibitionists that translates to telling them they need to grow up and face a harsh reality.
Just because they don’t like guns does not give them the right to prevent others from owning or legally carrying them.
Joined in her concurrence, which runs just over 13 pages, were Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Barrett lowers the proverbial boom in her final paragraph: “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.”
Constitutional rights are not subject to popularity contests, which Barrett pointed out by adding, “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.’”
If there was ever any doubt about Barrett’s perspective on the Second Amendment, her concurring opinion should erase it, as she deftly separates the right of a property owner to decide what is and is not allowed on his or her property, but when the government steps in and makes the call, that’s a violation.
“No one doubts that all property owners in Hawaii could bar the carry of arms on their respective premises, if they wanted to,” Barrett explains. “But the Second Amendment does not apply to private parties. It does apply to the States. See U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1. And when a State enacts a property law that regulates arms-bearing conduct, that law implicates the Second Amendment.”
Those who argue otherwise, or don’t understand the significant difference, probably need a refresher course on high school civics. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board gets it, so why not state lawmakers?
Essentially, where Hawaii’s law failed is because it was Hawaii’s law, not the decision of private property owners, whom the state, via its legislation, essentially drafted to be its agents of gun control, like it or not.
As noted by MS Now, “As Barrett also pointed out, states can’t be the one prohibiting people from exercising their constitutional rights on private property, even if it’s open to the public… The point is that a state cannot avoid constitutional scrutiny simply by routing a burden on a constitutional right through property law.”
The Wolford ruling also sent a message to the Hawaii state Supreme Court, which back in February 2024 in a case known as State of Hawaii v. Christopher L. Wilson, ruled, “Article I, section 17 of the Hawaiʻi Constitution mirrors the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. 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.”
Maybe not, but in McDonald v. City of Chicago, released in June 2010, the Second Amendment was incorporated to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment, so it applies to Hawaii. States simply cannot pretend that the Second Amendment doesn’t exist. The Bill of Rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution is an all-or-nothing proposition, not a legal buffet from which a state or smaller jurisdiction can pick and choose which rights it approves and toss the others in the trash.
The Wolford decision probably spells bad news to similar laws in four other states: California, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. Those states have not been friendly to the Second Amendment, and now anti-gun Democrat lawmakers in the respective legislatures will likely scramble to invent ways to dance around the ruling, because it is a safe bet they’re not going to just acknowledge their mistake and adjust their laws accordingly.
Workman is editor-in-chief at TheGunMag.com
