Hawaii’s high court last week thumbed its nose at the U.S. Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence, declaring that the right to bear arms in public clashes with the “Aloha spirit” and therefore doesn’t really apply in that state.
That’s right. The Hawaii Supreme Court believes it can water down and reinterpret the federal Bill of Rights, because—well— “vibes.”
In a legal world where state and lower courts routinely find new and absurd ways to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and pivot their way around the right to keep and bear arms, this opinion by the Hawaii Supreme Court stands apart as particularly ludicrous.
The court argues that Hawaii’s pre-statehood history “does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others,” as though this somehow determines the scope of federal…
