BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Second Amendment Foundation have filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court supporting a challenged to the restrictive concealed carry law in Hawaii which essentially makes it impossible for law-abiding, licensed citizens of that state to exercise their right to bear arms outside of their own homes. The case is known as Wolford v. Lopez.
Joining CCRKBA and SAF is the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus. They are represented by SAF attorney Konstadinos T. Moros.
The 26-page amicus brief details the problems with Hawaii’s statute, which has been boiled down to what critics call the “Vampire Rule,” which requires legally-armed citizens to get permission from individual property owners before entering ordinary places which are open to the public, such as restaurants, supermarkets, pharmacies and even gas stations.
“As we point out in our brief,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “the ‘Vampire Rule’ is unconstitutional because presumptively denying those exercising their right to carry from entering almost every relevant place ‘would eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense,’ which is precisely the intent of the politicians who authored the statute now being challenged.
“Similar restrictions have been adopted by a handful of other states,” he continued, “and they are referenced in our brief. Those who authored and support the ‘Vampire Rule’ concept have explicitly acknowledged that the point of this restriction is to make firearms carry inconvenient as a means of discouraging honest citizens from exercising this important right. Simply put, the ‘Vampire Rule’ was conceived to undermine the right to carry.
“Our brief to the Supreme Court carefully defines the problem in Hawaii, and other states, where this abhorrent strategy has been adopted to effectively dance around the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen,” Gottlieb explained. “We are hopeful the Court makes it clear that such statutes, which are literally too-clever-by-half, belong in the same scrap heap as the two-step process for deciding Second Amendment cases that was clearly rejected by this court in the Bruen ruling.”