WASHINGTON, June 25 (DC Times Online) — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down Hawaii’s law requiring concealed-carry permit holders to get a property owner’s consent before entering certain privately owned places open to the public, ruling 6-3 that the measure violated the Second Amendment.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority in Wolford v. Lopez and said Hawaii’s law “violates the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.” He also wrote that the rule “hobble[s] what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives.”
The decision invalidates what reporting has described as Hawaii’s “vampire rule,” which treated concealed carry as barred on covered private property unless the owner gave permission or posted a sign allowing firearms.
NBC News reported that three liberal justices dissented. The ruling adds to the court’s modern gun-rights precedents, including District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, which struck down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban, and McDonald v. City of Chicago in 2010, which applied the right to state and local governments.
