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.
To protect against domestic tyranny?
But it doesn’t. Second amendment is not sufficient to protect against domestic tyranny, even from local police with radios and swat teams. Second amendment has a goal of supporting a people’s militia, but there isn’t any such thing nor could it possibly prevent domestic tyranny. At least if you define national guard as that people’s militia, it is equipped to make a difference and somewhat independent of the federal command structure …. But the second amendment in no way supports that