The Hawaii Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion on Wednesday declaring that its state constitution grants individuals absolutely no right to keep and bear arms outside the context of military service. Its decision rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, refusing to interpolate SCOTUS’ shoddy historical analysis into Hawaii law. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the ruling on this week’s Slate Plus segment of Amicus; their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
And those pesky federalist papers that explicitly clarified the intent significantly closer to the context of the period.
People forget that the founders were not of the same ideology. Plenty of founders disagreed with each other on the danger of military force, but generally agreed on popular gun ownership to protect against it.