I feel bad for anyone depending on The Nation's Elie Mystal to inform them about legal decisions. I realize that he's got his own opinion on things, but you can't be much of a legal analyst if you're as willing to ignore cold, hard facts.
That's exactly what Mystal has done in his steaming hot take on the Wolford decision, which manages to misinform readers about the Court's Bruen test and why Hawaii's historical analogies failed to pass muster while also ignoring the state's attempt to use a racist gun law to justify its modern restriction on the right to carry. Oh, and bonus points for describing the majority of the justices as "ammosexuals."
According to recent Supreme Court precedent, any present-day gun regulation must have an analogue in a gun regulation that existed around the time of the founding. In 2023, Hawai’i passed a law prohibiting guns on private property that is otherwise open to the public (like restaurants). In an effort to comply with the Supreme Court’s ridiculous requirement, the state cited numerous laws prohibiting armaments in public places from around the time of Hawai’i’s admission to the Union (since Hawai’i wasn’t a state in 1789); it also, for good measure, cited a number of regulations dating all the way back to Hawai’i’s days as an independent kingdom. The Supreme Court didn’t care. The court ruled, 6–3 along normal partisan lines, that Hawai’i’s law violates the Second Amendment. The ruling shows that the ammosexuals on the Supreme Court won’t apply their own precedents fairly when it comes to guns. In this case, Hawai’i did literally everything the Republicans ordered it to do before passing a gun regulation, but the Republicans still struck it down. There is no gun regulation that these extremist Republicans will accept. We are doomed to an endless cycle of gun violence and death until we take control of the Supreme Court away from them.
It's not that the Supreme Court didn't care about the laws Hawaii cited. It's that six of the justices correctly determined that none of those laws were appropriate analogues to the state's default prohibition regarding concealed carry on private property open to the public. Laws that were in existence at the time of Hawaii statehood are completely irrelevant to the Court's "text, history, and tradition" test, which focuses on laws that were in place around the time the Second Amendment was adopted (and to some degree, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868).
Hawaii's contention that the "vampire rule" was just a continuation of the islands' traditions dating back centuries is also irrelevant. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority, the Second Amendment is the same no matter where in the United States you live. Local traditions that contradict that right must give way to the Constitution. This is hardly a new concept, and given his politics I would think that Mystal would be ticked at Hawaii for essentially adopting the same arguments raised by southern states to defend segregation in the 1950s and 60s.
But as I mentioned, Mystal couldn't even take Hawaii to task for using a racist gun law adopted in Louisiana in 1865 that prohibited individuals from carrying guns onto plantations without the owner's permission; a law that was part of the state's infamous Black Codes meant to deprive freed slaves of their newfound liberty.
Hawaii did not do "literally everything the Republicans ordered it to do before passing a gun regulation." In act of defiance to the Bruen decision, and in a blatant attempt to negate a constitutional right, Hawaii Democrats adopted a law that banned concealed carry in almost every public space. The historical statutes they cited weren't remotely relevant; anti-poaching statutes from the 1700s, a racist gun law from the 1800s, and another anti-poaching effort from the late 1800s. None of them were as broad as Hawaii's law, and none of them were meant to deprive the entire population of their right to keep and bear arms throughout the entirety of their day.
Mystal claims there's no gun regulation that SCOTUS will accept, which is just as absurd as the rest of his analysis. Last term the Court turned away challenges to Illinois' ban on concealed carry on public transportation, states refusing to recognize out-of-state carry permits, prohibitions on young adults purchasing and carrying handguns, and the law banning all felons from possessing firearms, among others. I wish a majority of the Court were as willing and eager to strike down every gun law as Mystal claims, but that's simply not the case.
As for the "endless cycle of gun violence and death" that Mystal complains about, we currently have the lowest recorded homicide rate in U.S. history, and violent crime is trending down to historically low levels as well. That's cause for celebration, but Mystal once again ignores reality because it conflicts with his anti-gun ideology.
I don't think Mystal is a moron. I just believe that his goal is to enrage his audience, not inform them. He's far from alone in that regard, but it makes his legal "analysis" utterly worthless to everyone but the anti-gun activists who hope his readers will take his misinformation to heart.
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