Hawaii rules against public carrying of guns without permit, citing ‘aloha spirit’

Hawaii’s highest court has ruled that a person can be prosecuted for carrying a gun in public without a permit, citing the state’s “spirit of aloha”. The ruling comes after the state supreme court reviewed a 2017 case against Christopher Wilson, who had an unregistered, loaded pistol in his front waistband when police were called after a Maui landowner reported seeing a group of men on his property at night.

The court denied the man’s request to dismiss weapons possession charges on grounds that they violated a right to bear arms enshrined in the US constitution in 1791. The ruling establishes that states may retain the authority to require people to obtain a permit for their firearm before they may carry it in public.The ruling has been hailed as a landmark decision by Hawaii attorney general Anne Lopez, who said it “affirms the constitutionality of crucial gun-safety legislation” and that “commonsense tools like licensing and registration have an important role to play in addressing that problem”.

However, Ben Lowenthal, an attorney for Wilson, said they may now seek a review from the federal appeals court. Alan Beck, an attorney not involved in the Wilson case, told the Associated Press that the ruling reflects a “culture in Hawaii that’s very resistant to change”.

The ruling is based on Hawaii’s “spirit of aloha”, which mandates that state officials and judges treat the public with kindness, unity, agreeableness, humility, and patience. Justice Todd Eddins, who authored the opinion, noted that Hawaii’s gun regulations date back to the 1800s, when Hawaii was a kingdom and King Kamehameha III had “promulgated a law prohibiting ‘any person or persons’ on shore from possessing a weapon, including any ‘knife, sword-cane, or any other dangerous weapon’”. Eddins added that “Smoothbore, muzzle-loaded, and powder-and-ramrod muskets were not exactly useful to colonial-era mass murderers. And life is a bit different now, in a nation with a lot more people, stretching to islands in the Pacific Ocean.”

Hawaii’s gun laws have been a contentious issue for years, with the state struggling to revise its gun laws after a 2022 US Supreme Court decision that expanded the right to carry firearms outside the home. Many gun owners rushed to apply for permits after the Supreme Court ruled a concealed-carry weapons law was unconstitutional. The court subsequently struck down a decision by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that had supported Hawaii’s similarly restrictive gun laws.

In Hawaii, each county’s police department must write its own rules and issue concealed gun permits. Maui, Kauai, and Hawaii counties have already adopted new rules to comply with the court’s decision and begun issuing concealed carry permits. Only the City and County of Honolulu has yet to approve new rules even as some 575 people are waiting for permits.

The issue of gun control is a contentious one in the US, with some states pushing for more relaxed gun laws while others, like Hawaii, are tightening their restrictions. The ruling in Hawaii v Christopher Wilson does not throw out the concept of the right to bear firearms but rather establishes that states may retain the authority to require people to obtain a permit for their firearm before they may carry it in public.