June 14, 2024
Washington, D.C.- NAGR, the National Association for Gun Rights filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court today in the case of Wilson v. Hawaii, a prosecution for carrying a handgun without a license. The Hawaii Supreme Court said that “The spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities.” The question appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court is whether or not the Bruen test should apply to criminal prosecutions for carrying without a license. The brief may be found here.
“Hawaii’s defiance of Bruen is only different from the rest of the lower courts because Hawaii didn’t bother to give lip service to the Supreme Court’s precedent. For instance, the 7th Circuit circumvented Bruen in our lawsuit by holding that AR-15s aren’t even ‘arms’ under the Second Amendment. Our amicus brief points out that the Hawaii ruling is just the latest in a long pattern of Bruen defiance, not an outlier. Here’s hoping the Supreme Court takes swift, decisive action to end this legal anarchy and uphold the Second Amendment,” said Hannah Hill, Executive Director of the National Foundation for Gun Rights.
NAGR has appealed the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling upholding the Illinois so-called “Assault Weapons” Ban, a ruling that found AR-15s are not even “arms” under the Second Amendment. This appeal for certiorari is currently pending before the Supreme Court.
The amicus brief points out the grave Constitutional implications of a state court’s defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s authority, but also reminds the Justices that Hawaii simply followed the example of numerous lower courts across the country which have circumvented Bruen’s plain holdings in order to uphold unconstitutional gun bans.
Quote from the brief: “Despite Bruen’s admonition, the lower courts have continued to treat the right to keep and bear arms as a second-class right. NAGR hopes the Court will use this case to send a forceful rebuke to these courts lest ‘anarchy [] prevail within the federal judicial system.’”
“We searched through the Constitution, and we didn’t find ‘spirit of Aloha’ anywhere in it. What IS in the Constitution is ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ The Founders would have laughed out loud if someone had complained that the Second Amendment was inconsistent with the ‘spirit of Aloha,’ and hopefully that’s what the Supreme Court does too – along with slapping down all the other lower courts also in defiance of Bruen,” said Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights.
The National Association for Gun Rights is the nation’s largest “no compromise” pro-gun organization, with 4.5 million members nationwide.