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.
I think this also. I don’t think this is good, but it’s not without precedent considering how Federal law and marijuana legalization works on a State level superceding Federal.
Truthfully this is just another ruling denying Federal as law of the land.
Marijuana laws don’t supersede federal law though; the fed. gov’t simply chooses not to enforce the laws in states that have legalized it, and citizens of the legal states don’t have standing to sue the gov’t and compel them to enforce the laws. (And yeah, I agree that marijuana needs to be descheduled completely so that this isn’t an issue.) (IIRC, they would need to demonstrate a personal harm caused by lack of enforcement to have standing to sue.)
In point of fact, if you purchase legal marijuana, either for recreational purposes or medical reasons, you are ineligible to purchase a firearm; this is made very clear on form 4473, where it specifically states that even if it’s legal in your state, it’s still a federal crime that makes you a prohibited person.
It is ultimately all rooted in the same concept, a rejection of the Supremacy Clause.
This is just another salvo in the kind of language that leads to either a civil war or a secession, and it being made by the “good guys” doesn’t stop that.
I… Don’t think that’s really the case. I don’t think anti-2A states like HI and CA are trying to delegitimize the Supremacy Clause, I think they truly believe that they’re on the right side of history when they’re undermining civil rights. OTOH, I would agree 100% that Texas for instance is trying to undermine the supremacy clause and force a gov’t showdown.
…Which, if Biden is smart, he will avoid doing until and if he wins the election. I would bet a lot of money that Abbot has engineered this to be an election year stunt, esp. since senate Republicans torpedoed their own deal on immigration reform. If Biden goes after Abbot before the election–even though precedent is clearly on his side–he energizes the far right. If he does it the day after he wins the election–regardless of whether he becomes a lame duck or not–then Republicans don’t get to use that.
it really doesn’t, though. federal agents can and still occasionally do assert the supremacy of federal prohibition over state level legalization, it’s just that they’ve been directed not to in most cases. you can absolutely still be arrested for possession and when I was getting my card they made an effort to point that out and told me not to bring it to the post office or national parks or anything else like that where the law enforcement is likely to be federal rather than state or local.