WASHINGTON, June 25 (DC Times Online) — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down Hawaii’s law requiring concealed-carry permit holders to get a property owner’s consent before entering certain privately owned property open to the public, ruling 6-3 that the measure violated the Second Amendment.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court in Wolford v. Lopez and said Hawaii’s law “violates the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.” He said the rule burdened what the Second Amendment protects: “the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives.”
The Hawaii law, described in reporting as the state’s so-called “vampire rule,” treated concealed carry as barred on many private properties unless owners affirmatively allowed firearms or posted signs saying otherwise. The court’s decision means the state cannot enforce that default ban under the ruling.
NBC News reported that three liberal justices dissented. The court’s majority was conservative.
The decision adds to a line of Supreme Court gun-rights cases that began with District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, when the court struck down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban, and McDonald v. City of Chicago in 2010, when the court applied the Second Amendment against state and local governments.
Source links used for reporting included the Supreme Court case and news coverage of the decision and its background, including Heller and McDonald.
