If you're a regular reader here, you're probably aware of just how insufferable I find the entire line of nonsense about how the Wolford decision upended property rights. Any reading of the decision makes it clear that the justices absolutely believe businesses have a right to prohibit the exercise of gun rights on their property. It just says the state can't make that the default position.
Which has been the norm for decades, just about everywhere in the country, until very, very recently, when the vampire rule was concocted in response to Bruen.
The goal of that was never to "protect property rights." It was to create as many gun-free zones as humanly possible, to specifically discourage people from exercising their Second Amendment rights everywhere. Bruen made it clear they couldn't just declare the island of Manhattan a gun-free zone--yes, the specific example in Bruen—so they came up with the vampire rule to effectively do the same thing while obeying the letter of the decision.
And it didn't work.
But what's funny is this op-ed from the Sacramento Bee, which manages to contradict itself in the first two paragraphs.
The Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday, June 25, in Wolford v. Lopez, made clear that the conservative justices favor Second Amendment rights even over other traditional conservative values, such as protecting property rights and deferring to state governments.
The court, in another 6-3 decision about gun rights, continued to greatly limit the ability of the government to protect public safety and save lives by regulating firearms.
If it were about property rights, then the decision wouldn't have been about what the government can or can't do. It would have been about what property owners could or couldn't do.
That's because Hawaii's vampire rule wasn't about property rights. The state law already respected property rights by allowing business owners to declare their stores gun-free zones if they so desired. The onus was on them to do it, but we're talking about a civil liberty. The assumption has always been that your rights continue onto private property unless the owner says otherwise.
Just like I don't have to allow a guest to call me names in my living room because he has First Amendment rights, a restaurant owner doesn't have to allow someone to carry a gun into their restaurant. That's how property rights work.
Hawaii, however, decided that gun rights didn't exist at the door unless the business specifically allowed them, knowing full well that most wouldn't bother one way or the other, so that the Second Amendment was treated as a second-class right, all because of the "Aloha Spirit" or something.
In just two paragraphs, the author completely upended their own argument. Oh, they continue to try and claim there's some great inconsistency and that conservatives are just a bunch of hypocrites, but that's because so many on the left refuse to sit down and actually listen to anyone on the right. They might find out there's no inconsistency here at all.
And considering how often these same people want to tell others what they can and can't do in their businesses, on their property, and in their lives as they are, they don't have any ground to stand on.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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