Second Amendment

Jacob Sullum | 1.20.2026 6:00 PM

After the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, several states had to repeal laws requiring that residents demonstrate a "special need" before they were allowed to carry guns in public for self-defense. But even as they made carry permits easier to obtain, legislators made them much harder to use by restricting the locations where people could legally possess firearms. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court weighed the constitutionality of a variation on that theme: a Hawaii law that bans guns from private property open to the public unless the owner has explicitly allowed them.

Three justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—were clearly inclined to uphold that law. But the rest of the Court seemed skeptical that it can pass muster under the Second Amendment.

Under Hawaii's law, carry permit holders who bring guns onto private property are committing a crime unless the owner has given his consent via "clear and conspicuous signage" or "unambiguous written or verbal authorization." That rule, the gun owners who challenged the law note, vastly complicates their ability to carry firearms for self-defense. In the absence of "clear and conspicuous signage," they must seek advance permission whenever they visit businesses such as grocery stores, gas stations, or restaurants.

That requirement, Alan Beck, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in Wolford v. Lopez, told the justices, "defies a national tradition of allowing people to carry [guns] onto private property open to the public" unless "the owner objects." Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris, who joined Beck in attacking Hawaii's law, likewise argued that the state was deviating from longstanding custom. When the Second Amendment was ratified, she noted, "people commonly carried arms" while traveling. "It would've been profoundly disturbing to the founding generation," she said, "to hear that in order to travel [and stop at] taverns or anywhere else," they would need "the affirmative consent of each [owner] and hope that they weren't trespassing if they were traveling and their carriage had to stop."

Under Bruen, Hawaii's law is constitutional only if the state can show it is "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." When it upheld Hawaii's law in 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th........

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