The Hawaii Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion on Wednesday declaring that its state constitution grants individuals absolutely no right to keep and bear arms outside the context of military service. Its decision rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, refusing to interpolate SCOTUS’ shoddy historical analysis into Hawaii law. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the ruling on this week’s Slate Plus segment of Amicus; their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
This would…be good actually? The scary thing about guns isn’t revolutions, it’s random sad men poisoned with conservatism doing a mass shooting.
It would invalidate every firearm regulation at the federal level. None of them include carve outs for militia.
Do you need to explicitly include carve-outs or are those implicit? Don’t laws just get interpreted with the constitution in mind, without having to be completely thrown out? Genuinely asking!
Do you need to explicitly include carve-outs or are those implicit?
If you have a law that says “a person cannot carry a gun in a courthouse”, that would mean everyone, including police, cannot carry a gun in a courthouse. You can say, “felons cannot possess firearms.” I guess that “exempts” people who are not felons implicitly.
Don’t laws just get interpreted with the constitution in mind, without having to be completely thrown out?
I’m not sure if I understand your question correctly. A portion of a law can be struck down without the whole law being struck down as unconstitutional.
