Let's take a trip to the dank, Biden-era past. Hawaii had just passed a gun law using logic that would make Justice Brown Jackson look positively Socratic:
Hawaii’s Supreme Court said the Second Amendment doesn’t apply because of the “Spirit of Aloha,” whatever the hell that means.
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) July 26, 2024
It’s just another way these anti-rights clowns are trying to justify violating our rights; they can fuck right off. pic.twitter.com/UKspS9Pkbb
Last autumn, we noted that "spirit" was leading to Hawaii getting a date in court - the big court - over its bizarre gun law banning legal concealed carry on all publicly-accessible private property.
On Thursday, the "Spirit of Aloha" met the "Spirit of Find Out" in the SCOTUS, good and hard.
LEGAL ALERT: Supreme Court rules 6-3 that Hawaii's vampire rule banning guns on private property by default violates the Second Amendment: https://t.co/rCwSWdkxf0 pic.twitter.com/BsMZb9JESB
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) June 25, 2026
It is - or was - called the "Vampire" gun bill, because..."
Wolford v. Lopez is called the “vampire rule” because of the classic myth that a vampire cannot enter unless they are given permission or is invited. It challenges a Hawaii law (with similar rules in places like California, New York, etc.) that prohibits licensed concealed-carry… pic.twitter.com/CNMaf4XEw2
— SAF (@2AFDN) June 25, 2026
The Supremes just drove a garlic-coated stake through the law's heart:
In a major defeat for gun control activists, the Supreme Court has ruled that Hawaii's law prohibiting concealed carry by default on all private property open to the public is a violation of the Second Amendment's right to bear ar
The 6-3 ruling, with Justice Samuel Alito writing for the majority, wasn't exactly unanticipated, and not just because a majority of the Court appeared skeptical of the argument presented by Hawaii's attorney Neal Katyal during oral arguments back in January. No other "vampire rule," (as Firearms Policy Coalition's Rob Romano nicknamed the law) has withstood lower court scrutiny, with similar bans being struck down in Maryland, New York, and California.
Amy Howe at Scotusblog is covering the case:
In his 24-page opinion for the court, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the law “hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who dissented, countered that the law “fairly applies a first principle of property law—the right to exclude—and does no harm to the Second Amendment.”
Hawaii passed the law in 2023, just under one year after the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In Bruen, the court invalidated a New York handgun-licensing law that required state residents who wanted to carry a handgun in public to show that they had a special need to defend themselves. The court also made clear that the Second Amendment protects a broad right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. In his opinion for the majority in Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas emphasized that courts should uphold gun restrictions only if they are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The defense relied on an unusual definition of consent:
Hawaii had argued that there is no such thing as a right to armed entry onto private property without consent, pointing to a handful of historical examples of similar laws since America's founding.
But the court's conservatives concluded that those analogues were "outlier legal rules adopted in a few locales."
"Overwhelming evidence shows an enduring American tradition permitting public carry," Alito wrote.
Given the gun rights movement's winning streak in courts, it's tempting to remember the Obama years, when the then-President's will-he-or-won't-he hinting about gun control made him the biggest gun salesman in history, and wonder if the left's orgy of gun rights legislation hasn't passed the point of diminishing returns, and moved onto negative returns:
The loss of Hawaii in the Vampire law case is another example of blue states proving the greatest allies to the gun rights community. https://t.co/saY4Elb6bV This is just the latest ill-considered law that succeeded in strengthening gun rights. Hawaii rivals New York in…
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 25, 2026
Are these laws going to cost the left?
