The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a legal challenge to a Hawaii law banning the carrying of firearms in “sensitive places.”
The law, passed in June 2023, prohibits residents from carrying guns in schools, beaches, parks, bars, government buildings, public transportation, and a long list of other public venues. It also punishes people for leaving firearms unattended in vehicles and for owning a gun while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
The measure also prohibits people from carrying on private property unless its owner explicitly authorizes it via signage or verbal/written consent.
The law also includes stricter licensing requirements for those seeking concealed carry permits, along with higher application and regulatory fees.
Supreme Court Takes Up Hawaii’s “Vampire Rule” Gun Case https://t.co/GDQkM1RA1O via@Ammoland pic.twitter.com/FyXbgEloOM
— Evelyn (@IsabelMartijn) October 7, 2025
Hawaii’s government passed the law as a response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which eliminated onerous requirements for gun permits while establishing a baseline for challenging the constitutionality of gun control laws.
The lawsuit was filed by three Hawaii residents and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition. The plaintiffs argue that the law reverses the longstanding policy in which gun owners could carry on most private property unless the owner specifically bans firearms. They contend that the law conflicts with Supreme Court precedent, which establishes that people have a general right to possess firearms in public spaces.
The plaintiffs allege that the law “renders illusory the right to carry in public” and “effectively nullified the Second Amendment rights of millions of Hawaiians…to bear firearms as they go about their daily lives in public.”
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the law in September 2024, relied on obscure historical laws to comply with Bruen’s requirement that gun restrictions must be similar to laws passed during the Founding era. It used an “anti-poaching colonial law and … a discriminatory Reconstruction era Black Code” to defend the measure, the lawsuit notes.
The Black Codes included some of the earliest gun control laws, which were enacted specifically to prevent Black people from owning firearms.
The actual historical tradition “is that individuals may carry arms on private property unless the property owner chooses otherwise,” the plaintiffs argue.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to overturn the law, contending that it “presumptively prohibit[s] the carrying of handguns by licensed permit holders on private property open to the public unless the property owner affirmatively gives express permission to the handgun carrie.”
They point out that “no matter how expansively we analogize, we do not see how a tradition of prohibiting illegal hunting on private lands supports prohibiting the lawful carriage of firearms for self-defense on private property open [to] the public.”
I don’t think we need a crystal ball to see how the Supreme Court is likely to rule on this matter. Hawaii’s law is a clear violation of the Second Amendment and doesn’t even come close to passing the Bruen test. It is nothing more than a sneaky way to bar residents from carrying guns in most places in response to Supreme Court precedent.
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