Will the Supreme Court stop Hawaii’s stealth gun ban?

Aloha State wants to set a Second Amendment-snatching precedent

by John Commerford, Washington Times, Sunday, February 8, 2026

OPINION:

In late January, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Wolford v. Lopez, a pivotal case that will help decide whether Hawaii and other anti-gun states can sidestep the Constitution with lawyerly tricks taking aim at concealed carry.

At issue is a Hawaii statute that forbids licensed carry permit holders from bringing firearms onto private property open to the public — including restaurants, beaches and shopping areas — without explicit permission from the property owner. Violating this law is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison.

For Hawaii residents, that means their hard-won right to self-defense exists mostly on paper. If this law survives, other anti-gun legislatures will be lining up to copy it. In effect, Hawaii’s policy could become a model for undermining the Second Amendment.

The statute was crafted in direct response to the Supreme Court’s landmark New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen decision. In Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the right to carry a firearm for personal protection is not a privilege granted by government discretion but a fundamental constitutional guarantee.

Hawaii’s lawmakers pretended to comply by supposedly loosening their permitting criteria and then turned around and enacted a law that makes those permits practically useless. As the National Rifle Association explained in its amicus brief, trading one unconstitutional licensing scheme for another that eliminates the right altogether still fails the most basic test of constitutional compliance.

To defend this scheme, Hawaii’s attorneys went to a particularly dishonorable chapter of our history. They rely on an 1865 Louisiana statute, a Reconstruction‑era Black Code that Southern states used after the Civil War to control emancipated Blacks and keep them in conditions similar to slavery.

That law barred formerly enslaved people from carrying firearms on plantations without the owner’s consent, and the state now claims it reflects a long-standing tradition of restricting guns on private property.

The fact that a modern American state is leaning on a law written to oppress freed men and women to justify a new gun ban today exposes the poverty of its argument. Using measures crafted to control and exploit Black labor as a precedent for limiting rights in present-day America is as cynical as it is wrong.

Gun control advocates continue to insist that restricting lawful carry makes the public safer. The data proves otherwise. Twenty-nine states now have constitutional carry laws, and as carry rights have expanded nationwide, violent crime has dropped. The decline in homicide since 2022 has coincided with the largest expansion of carry rights in U.S. history.

That pattern stands in stark contrast with the tired rhetoric behind Hawaii’s law. Concealed-carry permit holders are some of the most law-abiding citizens in America. Texas statistics show they are nearly seven times less likely to be convicted of a crime than the general population. Colorado data reveals that permit revocations are exceedingly rare, typically 0.01% to 0.32% annually, and often unrelated to criminal conduct.

Independent research from sources as varied as the Rand Corp., the Chicago Tribune and even the Violence Policy Center confirms that lawful carriers offend at far lower rates than ordinary citizens.

Hawaii’s policy — like the “may-issue” permitting regime invalidated in Bruen — starts from the presumption that lawful carry should be the exception, not the rule. Your right to carry is void unless and until the government or a property owner graciously decides to let you use it. It forces every property owner to take extraordinary action just to allow ordinary citizens to exercise a constitutional right.

If the Supreme Court sides with Hawaii, it will not only harm those seeking to defend themselves but will also legitimize the use of Jim Crow-era precedents as a foundation for modern gun control.

If the court instead sticks with Bruen and strikes down this law, it will be a win not just for Hawaii’s gun owners but also for every American who still takes the Bill of Rights at its word. If the justices deliver that outcome in the weeks or months ahead, Congress ought to reinforce the decision by enacting H.R. 38, the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act.

No citizen’s rights should evaporate at a state line, and the Second Amendment should protect all Americans equally, from Honolulu to Harrisburg.

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John Commerford is executive director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action.