During Tuesday’s oral arguments in Wolford v. Lopez, Justice Samuel Alito contended that Hawaii’s gun control relegates the Second Amendment to “second-class status.”
SCOTUSBLOG quoted Alito telling a Hawaii attorney the state was “relegating the Second Amendment to second-class status.”
Roll Call noted that Chief Justice John Roberts spoke of the Second Amendment being treated as a “disfavored right” and Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted the lack of historical precedent for Hawaii’s gun control, saying, “Here there is no sufficient history supporting the regulation, end of case.”
WATCH — AWR Hawkins: 2026 Is the Year for Concealed Carry National Reciprocity:
Breitbart News pointed out that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson contended that “Black Codes” offer precedent needed to justify Hawaiian gun controls, although she subsequently admitted said codes were “unconstitutional.”
Roll Call explained:
Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Samel A. Alito Jr. objected to Hawaii relying on the 1865 law, part of the “Black Codes” meant to disenfranchise newly freed former slaves. Alito called it the “height of irony” to cite a law meant to disarm freed slaves and make them vulnerable to the Ku Klux Klan in support of the modern Hawaii law.
The specific gun control at the center of the Lopez case is a restriction barring even licensed concealed carriers from carrying on private property that is open to the public unless said carriers first get permission from the landowner.
The case is Wolford v. Lopez, No. 23-16164 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down a similar gun control in Maryland on Tuesday.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.