In a stunning political shift, the Department of Justice on Thursday filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case challenging a Hawaii gun control law which declares, “The United States has a substantial interest in the preservation of the right to keep and bear arms and in the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment.”
The case is known as Wolford v. Lopez. It challenges Hawaii’s controversial Act 52, which essentially negates the right of individual citizens to bear arms in public, unless property owners give permission to have firearms on their property.
The brief, and the fact it was submitted, is causing tremors, especially in the Second Amendment community, where, as civil rights attorney William Kirk, president of Washington Gun Law states on YouTube, observers are considering it “monumental.”
Taking a hardly subtle shot at the Joe Biden presidency, Kirk asks rhetorically, “Did you ever believe, especially during the last four years, that you would ever hear the Department of Justice have this as their official statement?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N3s5uh2Dfk
The 27-page brief is being hailed by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, which “offers kudos to the Trump administration for making it happen.”
“It is cases like this which compelled the Citizens Committee to launch our online petition to A.G. Bondi, asking her to focus the Task Force’s attention on Hawaii and eleven other states,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb in a statement issued Friday. “As the administration’s brief details, Hawaii’s Act 52 was defiantly passed in response to the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen ruling, and is designed to essentially make the exercise of Second Amendment rights impossible in the Aloha State. No state can say it is above the Bill of Rights, and this is essentially what Hawaii is doing.”
In its 27-page brief, the DOJ contends, “The scope and operation of Hawaii’s default rule thus establish that the rule serves no legitimate objective and that it instead seeks simply to impede the carrying of firearms. That is plainly unconstitutional.”
The brief was submitted by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, Deputy Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris and Vivek Suri, assistant to the Solicitor General. Dhillon made news earlier this week by expanding the role of the DOJ Civil Rights Division to include a strong focus on defending Second Amendment rights.
The amicus brief mentions five states, including Hawaii, where in the aftermath of the 2022 Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling lawmakers adopted “default rule” laws which require property owner permission to legally carry concealed. The other states are California, New York, New Jersey and Maryland, all of which are named in the CCRKBA online petition to Attorney General Pamela Bondi, asking for action against onerous gun control laws. In all, 12 states are identified, and they have come to be known as the “Dirty Dozen.”
As attorney Kirk intimated, this is a remarkable reversal from prior administrations, even Republicans, which previously showed no or little interest in gun rights issues. Things are different under Trump, with Bondi and Dhillon apparently spearheading a strong Second Amendment restoration effort.
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