WASHINGTON, June 25 (DC Times Online) — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down Hawaii’s requirement that concealed-carry permit holders get a property owner’s consent before bringing guns onto certain private property open to the public, ruling 6-3 that the law violates the Second Amendment.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority in Wolford v. Lopez and said Hawaii’s law “violates the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.” He also wrote that the measure “hobble[s] what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives.”
The decision invalidates Hawaii’s so-called “vampire rule,” a label used in reporting for laws that make gun possession on covered property unlawful unless the property owner gives express permission or posts a sign allowing it.
The court’s conservative majority was joined by three liberal justices in dissent, according to the opinion summarized in the reporting. The ruling centers on a Hawaii statute governing concealed carry on certain privately owned properties that are open to the public.
The case adds to a line of modern Supreme Court gun-rights decisions that began with District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, when the court struck down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban and part of its storage rule. Two years later, the court extended that individual right against state and local governments in McDonald v. City of Chicago.
In Heller, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion, and the court’s decision drew praise from President George W. Bush, who said it confirmed an individual right to keep and bear arms.
Thursday’s ruling came from the court in Washington, where the justices sit, and it leaves Hawaii unable to enforce the challenged restriction on concealed-carry holders at the properties covered by the law.
