{"id":20004,"date":"2026-06-28T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/?p=20004"},"modified":"2026-06-28T15:48:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T21:48:25","slug":"labrador-letter-upholding-the-second-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/labrador-letter-upholding-the-second-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"Labrador Letter: Upholding the Second Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dear Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, the United States Supreme Court struck down a Hawaii law that made it a crime for concealed carry permit holders to walk onto private property open to the public unless the owner had first given express permission. In a 6-3 decision in Wolford v. Lopez, the Court ruled that the law, known as the “Vampire Rule,” violated the Second Amendment. Violating it was a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison. The Court held that while private property owners may restrict firearm possession on their own property, the state itself cannot impose that restriction as the default rule for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was part of getting this case to the Court in the first place. Along with Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, I led a coalition of 17 states in an amicus brief urging the justices to take up Wolford and reverse the Ninth Circuit, which had upheld Hawaii’s law even though the Second Circuit had struck down a similar restriction in New York under Antonyuk v. James. Two federal appeals courts had reached opposite conclusions on the same constitutional question, and only the Supreme Court could resolve which one was right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not the first time I have made this fight. I have led coalitions challenging Maryland’s ban on America’s most commonly owned rifle, California and Washington’s bans on standard ammunition magazines, and a Massachusetts law that let police arrest a New Hampshire man simply for telling them he was legally carrying a firearm while traveling. Every one of these cases rests on the same principle: the right to bear arms belongs to the people, not because government permits it, but because government is bound to protect it. No government, federal or state, has the authority to take what it never had the power to give.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hawaii’s law turned that principle on its head, treating a guaranteed liberty as a regulated privilege. Our brief explained that the law had no grounding in the historical tradition the Supreme Court requires under its Bruen decision. At the time of the founding, citizens were free to carry arms in public spaces and onto private property open to the public unless the owner expressly forbade it. Hawaii inverted that tradition entirely, and we warned the Court that if it let Hawaii get away with it, the approach would become a blueprint for restricting the rights of law-abiding gun owners nationwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, the Court agreed with us, and the win reaches well past Hawaii. California, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland have similar “Vampire Rule” laws restricting concealed carry on private property open to the public, and this decision is now the controlling precedent for legal challenges to those laws going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, stated plainly: “This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives. We hold that the law is unconstitutional.”<\/em> Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in a concurring opinion, wrote: “[A] majority’s opposition to a constitutional right is not a permissible basis for restricting it. After all, ‘[t]he very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy’ and ‘to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials.'”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was never just about Hawaii. It was a test of whether a state could nullify a constitutional right simply by redefining it, and whether that blueprint could spread across the country. I joined this fight because the Second Amendment does not stop at a state border. An Idahoan does not surrender constitutional rights by crossing into another state, and no state has the authority to treat those rights as optional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will always defend the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Idahoans, and of every American when those rights are under attack. Constitutional rights are not confined by geography or subject to the political preferences of state governments. This victory belongs to every citizen who understands that the right to keep and bear arms is a constitutional guarantee, not a privilege that disappears the moment you cross a state line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best regards,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Friends, This week, the United States Supreme Court struck down a Hawaii law that made it a crime for concealed carry permit holders to walk onto private property open to the public unless the owner had first given express permission. In a 6-3 decision in Wolford v. Lopez, the Court ruled that the law, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":19777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[243],"tags":[428,1596,131,25],"class_list":["post-20004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions-op-eds","tag-gun-rights","tag-hawaii","tag-scotus","tag-second-amendment","cat-243-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20005,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20004\/revisions\/20005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}