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In what amounts to a major WIN for the Second Amendment, the U.S. supreme Court just struck down one of the most restrictive gun laws in all 50 states. It was a law that required gun owners to get express permission to carry their weapons in stores and hotels. And if the prospect of trying to get a hold of someone in the Hilton family to get a permission slip for you to carry your gun seemed unrealistic, well, it also seemed unrealistic to the US Supreme Court who just struck it down. Let me give you the backstory on this law, the very unique rationale behind it, as well as what the new ruling means not just for the state, but for the entire country as a whole. So to start with, let me give you a super quick primer on three recent gun related rulings at the U.S. supreme Court that are relevant to our discussion today. Firstly, in the year 2008, in a case titled District of Columbia vs Heller, the US Supreme Court explicitly stated that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to bear arms. Up until then, people were making the argument that because of the wording of the Second Amendment, it only applied to state militias. But in 2008, the U.S. supreme Court struck down that interpretation and ruled that no, actually the right to gun ownership is an individual right afforded to all American citizens. Then two years later in 2010, in a case called McDonald v. Chicago, the U.S. supreme Court ruled that it's not just the federal government, also state governments have to recognize the Second Amendment as well. The rationale was that the 14th Amendment, it extended the protections of the Bill of Rights to the states and it made them apply to state governments as well. And so a state was not able to violate your Second Amendment rights separately from the federal government. And then lastly, the US Supreme Court ruled in a case relevant to our discussion in the year 2022 and that case was called New York State Rifle and Pistol association versus Bruin. Now we've covered that case many times before and there were many things that came out of that ruling. But relevant to our discussion today was that firstly, the Bruin decision determined that the right of the people to keep and bear arms extended beyond the home. And then secondly, the Bruen decision set up a new test, a new legal test that courts have to apply when deciding whether or not a certain anti gun law violates the U.S. constitution. Here was the relevant part in the majority opinion of the Bruen case that basically set up this test. Quote the burden falls on the defendants, meaning the state governments, to show that New York's proper cause requirement is consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation, constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them. With these principles in mind, the court concludes that respondents have failed to meet their burden to identify an American tradition justifying New York's proper cause requirement. And so that was obviously more related to that specific New York case. But starting in the year 2022, because of this decision, they established this new legal precedent that's colloquially called the Bruin Test. It's a two step process to determine whether a given law violates the Second Amendment. Firstly, the court must determine whether the Second Amendment's plain text covers the conduct in a given case. And then secondly, whether or not the anti gun law is consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. And so that was the legal backdrop in the year 2022 when the case in Hawaii played out. All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment. If you've watched our program Facts Matter, then you know that we focus on one thing which is the facts. Not speculation, not narratives, just what the data shows. And right now the data globally is pointing in a direction people should really be paying attention to, which is the fact that global conflicts are fueling market uncertainty. That's why I believe in owning something real, something physical, something that the government can't just inflate away, which is physical gold and physical silver from today's sponsor, which is American Hartford Gold, the company that I trust and who I've been personally buying from for many years. Now, these are tangible assets. 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By that point, the U.S. supreme Court had already determined in 2008 that U.S. citizens had the individual right to keep and bear arms. In 2010, that the state governments had to honor that right, and then in 2022 that the right naturally extended outside of people's homes. However, the state legislature of Hawaii, they still passed something known as Act 52, which was a sweeping ban on gun owners to be able to carry their guns almost anywhere outside their home. Quote, Hawaii's Act 52 banned handguns on private property unless the permit holder had received express authorization to carry a firearm on the property by the owner, lessee, operator, or manager of the property. It also banned firearms in bars, beaches, parks, and sensitive places such as hospitals, schools, and government buildings. The law plays the onus on private property owners who wish to allow concealed carry on their property to, to communicate their policy to the public. And so in the US State of Hawaii, you theoretically had the right to carry your firearm outside your home, just not in a park, in a beach, anywhere near or on school or government or a hospital property. And then on top of that, if you were to enter some sort of a private establishment, there would have to be an explicit sign, let's say, on the window or as soon as you come in, saying something like concealed carry is welcome here, meaning essentially that even though you technically had the right to carry outside your home, you really did not have that right. Hawaiian lawmakers, they call this the default rule, meaning that the default in terms of the private businesses is that everyone is banning guns in their establishment unless they say otherwise. In a funny twist of language, the critics of that law, they called it the vampire rule, because as we all know, vampires can't go into somewhere unless they're explicitly invited in. And so gun owners, they were saying that they were being treated like vampires under this law. Also, it's worth mentioning that similar laws have gone into effect in the states of New York, California, Maryland and New Jersey. I don't know so much about the latter three, but I know in New York the language is almost identical to what was passed in Hawaii. But we'll get to that in a moment. Circling back to the case of Hawaii, though, lawsuits were brought forth by three local gun owners there alongside the Hawaii Firearms Coalition, saying that the rights, their rights were being infringed by this state law. However, after it got to the appellate level, the U.S. court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, they reviewed the Hawaiian law, and they said that even under the strict Bruen test, the One that we described earlier, the Hawaii law was fine since, quote, the restrictions that it imposed fell well within the historical tradition. And realistically, in the unique case of Hawaii, that is true going back to the time not so long ago when Hawaii was not a state but rather its own kingdom. Hawaii's long record of tight weapon regulation goes back to restrictions imposed by King Kamehameha III. In 1833, the king promulgated a law prohibiting any person or persons on shore from possessing a weapon, including any knife, sword, cane or any other dangerous weapon. Violators were subject to arrest and punishment by fine or lashing. The State of Hawaii then argued that this historical backdrop led to the development of what they termed the aloha spirit, which then basically clashed with the U.S. supreme Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment. Quote, the state represents that Hawaiians do not think that people should be able to carry guns onto private property even if it is held open to the public, unless they obtain express consent. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Hawaiians agree that loaded concealed firearms should not be allowed into businesses at all. These attitudes appear to reflect the state's aloha spirit, which as explained by the Supreme Court of Hawaii, clashes with a federally mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day to day activities. Also on top of the Kingdom of Hawaii historical argument, the state also argued that even though within the Hawaii state constitution, they have language that almost exactly mirrors the Second Amendment in the federal constitution, the Hawaii State Constitution was written in the 1950s at a time when the general understanding was that that language limited gun ownership to militias rather than it being an individual right. And so basically they were arguing that the people who wrote the Hawaii state constitution, that they understood that what they were writing meant that only militias can gain access to guns rather than bob down the street. However, the local gun owners, they appealed the decision of the appellate court all the way up to the US Supreme Court, who wound up taking up the case. And after hearing the oral arguments from both sides, from both the state government as well as the local gun owners, late last week, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the gun owners. Specifically, in a, I guess very typical six to three split decision, you had Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito and John Roberts all vote against Hawaiian law. Writing for the majority of the court, you had Sam Alito write the following quote. The Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States. It cannot give way to the spirit of aloha. In Hawaii any more than it can yield to the spirit spirit of the Big Apple or the Windy City. It applies in the same way to our 50th state, where about 8% of adults possess guns, and our 49th state, where the figure is roughly 59%. Now, that was, of course, a reference to Alaska, which became a US State just a few months before Hawaii did. And the majority opinion then goes on to write the following quote. Merely local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate the meaning of fundamental bill of rights guarantees that apply to the states. Through the 14th Amendment, the state law departs sharply from the standard common law rule and access to private property held open to the public, under which everyone, including lawful carriers of firearms, may enter unless specifically forbidden to do so. The Hawaii law hobbles what the Second Amendment protects, preventing everyone from carrying a gun without express consent by the property owner, while it imposes severe restrictions on the daily activities of residents who have satisfied the state's rigorous requirements for for the issuance of a carry permit. When these permit holders leave home in the morning, not only must they take care to avoid all the territory where the possession of a gun is prohibited outright, but they may also be barred from entering many places that people routinely visit. And then, in a separate but concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett added the following analogy to make her point. According to Hawaii's logic, if a state made it a crime to wear religious head garb, such as a hijab, on private property open to the public, that law could evade constitutional scrutiny because the state has merely adjusted the default to require permission. To be clear, that is plainly wrong. Property laws, no less than other laws, are subject to constitutional limits. So when a property law restricts the bearing of arms, the state must prove that the law abides by the limits of the Second Amendment. And so there you have it. Hawaii's Act 52, which is basically a workaround against the Bruen decision, has been determined to be unconstitutional, which naturally, as you can imagine, the executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action hailed as a major victory for gun rights across the whole country. Quote, law abiding gun owners will no longer be forced to beg for special permission simply to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms in public places. And so there you have it. Moving forward, Hawaii is no longer a default. Can't bring your gun to any private establishment state. Then for the other 75 million Americans who live in one of the other four states with nearly identical laws in the books about where you can and can't bring your guns. Specifically New York, California, New Jersey, Maryland. Those are probably done as well. The Supreme Court ruling, it directly undermines California, New Jersey, Maryland and New York's similar default bans on guns in, in private property establishments that are open to the public. I mean, ultimately, someone will have to do the work of going through the motions and suing those individual states one by one. But given the fact that, for instance, again, New York State's law is pretty much identical to the one in Hawaii, it's most likely unenforceable. I mean, in fact, out of all the different states, Hawaii, really, if you think about it, had the strongest claim because they were a sovereign kingdom prior to becoming a US Territory and then later US State. And even that claim did not stand legal scrutiny, even though they had that historical record of gun and other weapon restrictions. So you can imagine that anything that the New York Solicitor General might argue in court will probably have very little sway. But we'll have to see ultimately whether how that plays itself out. But there you have it, a victory for the Second Amendment. And if you want to read the decision for yourself, I'll throw it down into the description box below. You can click on that link. It'll take you to the PDF version. We can read through it. You know, as any Supreme Court ruling, the top line is always interesting. If you get too deep into it, it gets into, like, I guess, the realm of legalese. But Sam Alito writes, well, it's very logically organized. So if you want to check it out, the link is down there. Also, also, if you're interested in general Supreme Court rulings, I would highly recommend this other link down in the description box below. If you a subscription link to the Epic Times. And by subscribing through that link, we'll also send you this magazine that we put together with all the rulings of the previous term, what they are, what the, what the background was of the ruling and what it means for both the plaintiffs in the case, but also for all of us moving forward. Because the Supreme Court, every single, every single session, they have so many rulings. And a lot of them might be like, technical or, or very specific to, like, a very, very niche set of circumstances. But a lot of them are very broad in their application and they apply to you, me and almost everybody else. And what we were able to do is compile them together, distill out the facts, distill out the meaning, like the true meaning, strip out all the legalese language and present it to you in a fun concise way, so check it out. If you subscribe to the Epoch Times using that link, you'll get that magazine. And also besides that magazine Moving forward, with a subscription to the Epoch Times, you'll get all the reports. Moving forward, as all these new Supreme Court rulings are coming out, you will stay informed of them as they're coming out. So check it out. You'll be supporting our work here, but also staying informed yourself. So it's a win win. Check it out. Subscribe to the Epoch Times. And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. Stay informed. Most importantly, stay it.