The Hawaii Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion on Wednesday declaring that its state constitution grants individuals absolutely no right to keep and bear arms outside the context of military service. Its decision rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, refusing to interpolate SCOTUS’ shoddy historical analysis into Hawaii law. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the ruling on this week’s Slate Plus segment of Amicus; their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The monkey paw curls. Gun control laws that do not exempt people who are in a well regulated militia are unconstitutional.
This would…be good actually? The scary thing about guns isn’t revolutions, it’s random sad men poisoned with conservatism doing a mass shooting.
It would invalidate every firearm regulation at the federal level. None of them include carve outs for militia.
Do you need to explicitly include carve-outs or are those implicit? Don’t laws just get interpreted with the constitution in mind, without having to be completely thrown out? Genuinely asking!
I try to be nice to people asking questions.
edit: I mean, if you don’t understand, and I didn’t answer your question, please feel comfortable to ask more questions.
If you have a law that says “a person cannot carry a gun in a courthouse”, that would mean everyone, including police, cannot carry a gun in a courthouse. You can say, “felons cannot possess firearms.” I guess that “exempts” people who are not felons implicitly.
I’m not sure if I understand your question correctly. A portion of a law can be struck down without the whole law being struck down as unconstitutional.
Thanks, I think you answered with your last sentence. They could conceivably just make the part of the law that affects militia members invalid, and keep the rest. Or do they have to literally strike out clauses in the language of the law? If it’s worded too generally it would be impossible to do so without gutting it.
I think that depends on how the law is written and in what way the law is unconstitutional.
Monkey’s toe curls: well regulated means heavy government oversight and oh, so many sensitivity and diversity equity trainings
I would support an affirmative action firearm ownership program.
In this context “well regulated” meant “in proper working order” not heavily overseen.
I’d argue our militias don’t seem to be in proper working order.
Every single gun control law out there exempts police officers and service members in the course of their duties.
I don’t think that is how rights work.
Go look at the gun laws. It’s there in black and white. If a soldier has written orders then civilian police can’t do anything. (Of course, the military can and that officer better have a very good reason related to the military’s needs)
And police officers are largely exempted from any sort of gun control.
Would requiring written orders to vote violate a soldier’s right to vote?
That’s not what’s meant in there. Soldiers can carry on their own off base with a privately owned weapon, according to local laws. But when the military is doing something like transporting serious goods, (nuclear waste, etc) they need to be able to protect it. So they get written orders allowing them to mount belt fed machine guns on the convoy vehicles. Or in lesser cases, just carry a service pistol. Obviously that machine gun breaks literally gun control law we’ve ever made, so there needs to be an exception in that laws for it.
*- I have no clue if the military actually transports nuclear waste, it’s just a hypothetical example.
*- Due to federal laws there is no right to carry a private weapon on base or keep a private weapon stored outside the armory.
The rest of the world considers it INSANITY, that Americans think guns and RIGHTS belong in the same sentence
Other countries have rights to gun ownership you know
Gun PRIVILEGES? Sure, its the RIGHTS part that is insane and uniquely American
I said rights
Now whether the law is followed depends on the country. But the country I live in does.
Well I stand corrected on it being UNIQUELY American, but not by much, and of those that share similar laws, I’m not sure the states should be striving to be compared to many of them. It’s still however insane as a right
Are US police officers well regulated though?