After the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, several states had to repeal laws requiring that residents demonstrate a "special need" before they were allowed to carry guns in public for self-defense. But even as they made carry permits easier to obtain, legislators made them much harder to use by restricting the locations where people could legally possess firearms. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court weighed the constitutionality of a variation on that theme: a Hawaii law that bans guns from private property open to the public unless the owner has explicitly allowed them.
Three justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—were clearly inclined to uphold that law. But the rest of the Court seemed skeptical that it can pass muster under the Second Amendment.
