When the United States Supreme Court ruled against the State of Texas, there was an immediate and loud reaction to “Defy SCOTUS!”. But now, the Hawaii Supreme Court has ruled that there is no right to carry a firearm in public in Hawaii saying the US Supreme Court rulings do not apply there. With this, the very same loud voices are crying foul and say Hawaii cannot defy the United States Supreme Court.
So, comply with decisions you agree with and defy the ones you don’t? Sorry, but that’s not the way the system works.
First off, the ruling in Texas was extremely limited and only applied to the Border Patrol being able to access portions of the border under control by the State of Texas, and if necessary, cutting their fences, to do their jobs.
What it DID NOT address is the ginormous pachyderm in the room that our current administration has redefined the job of the Border Patrol to be that of an illegal alien welcoming committee instead of defending our borders and preventing illegal border crossings.
The absolute worst-case scenario in this situation would be federal government attempting to remove or take members of Texas contingent into custody by force. From everything I’ve seen from the border area, the individuals on the ground on both sides are professionals and that won’t happen. However, I can also envision the FBI false flag division getting involved to create a situation where they ‘need to act’. Time will tell.
In the meantime, Texas will continue to defend its border from foreign invasion, without having to defy SCOTUS.
In the Second Amendment world, many states have been openly defying the Supreme Court with their so-called ‘Bruen response laws’, essentially attempting to implement the exact same unconstitutional restrictions in a different way.
Now we have the Hawaii Supreme Court issuing a unanimous ruling directly defying the United States Supreme Court by deciding there is no right to carry a firearm in public in the State of Hawaii.
Relying on US Supreme Court decisions in many cases including Miller, Heller, McDonald and even parts of Bruen, the Hawaii Supreme Court uses them as rational to reject the actual conclusion of Bruen. They go into great detail cherry-picking outlier opinions from reports and publications supporting their conclusions. Justification for current firearm regulations include laws from the slave era days of restricting firearms to white property owners and King Kamehameha I (1795 –1819) enacting Hawaii’s first law: Ke Kānāwai Māmalahoe, or “law of the splintered paddle.”
Honestly, if I didn’t read the decision myself, I would have thought this was something from the Babylon Bee, yet the quotes from the ruling speak for themselves. The link to the ruling is below. It’s a hoot.
“Article I, section 17 of the Hawaiʻi Constitution mirrors the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. We read those words differently than the current United States Supreme Court. We hold that in Hawaiʻi there is no state constitutional right to carry a firearm in public.”
“As the world turns, it makes no sense for contemporary society to pledge allegiance to the founding era’s culture, realities, laws, and understanding of the Constitution. “The thing about the old days, they the old days.” The Wire: Home Rooms (HBO television broadcast Sept. 24, 2006) (Season Four, Episode Three).”
“The spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities. The history of the Hawaiian Islands does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others.”
“There is no individual right to keep and bear arms under article I, section 17. So there is no constitutional right to carry a firearm in public for possible self-defense.”
Federalism principles allow states to provide broader constitutional rights protection to their people than the federal constitution. However, in Hawaii’s case, they are using this principle to eliminate rights protected at the federal level.
So, Hawaii, the 50th state of the United States, has just declared that they are not bound by the US Supreme Court’s decisions on the Second Amendment. What other natural rights protected by the US Constitution and Bill of Rights can be eliminated in Hawaii?
There are many issues with this ruling but for me it boils down to the extremist left attempting to destroy the rule of law and the legitimacy of the US Supreme Court. To be clear, they only want to destroy the rule of laws they DON’T agree with. If they agree with it, it should be enforced vigorously and those who break it punished severely.
The US Supreme Court itself has been a target of the extremists since it shifted to a 5-4 conservative majority. There have been, and continue to be, numerous attacks on the conservative justices. These include attempts to impeach, attempts to get them to retire or recuse themselves from important cases, threats to reorganize the courts, impose term limits, and even a plan to pack the Court with five new liberal justices in order to “remove political bias”.
Yet the biggest threat is to simply defy Supreme Court decisions the extremists disagree with. By ignoring the court’s ruling, they delegitimize the court itself and eliminate its function as the third independent branch of the government. Sadly, this is conceivable since it is the executive branch which enforces Supreme Court rulings. And as we’ve seen lately, the executive and legislative branches have zero interest in complying with Supreme Court rulings they oppose.
It’s very simple. Once you destroy the rule of law, you have no law. We don’t get to selectively defy one Supreme Court ruling because we disagree with it while absolutely demanding others comply with a ruling we do agree with. That’s not how the system works.
I’ll ask again, do you really think it doesn’t matter who you vote for?
Bob
https://www.courts.state.hi.us/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/SCAP-22-0000561.pdf
#Oddstuffing, #Constitution, #BillOfRights, #SecondAmendment, #2A, #GunControlFails, #Unconstitutional, #GunVote, #Aloha2ARights, #Hawaii, #medium, #mewe, #gab, #gettr, #truthsocial, #oddstuffing.com