Wolford v. Lopez · ¶109

In fact, Hawaii does not dispute that most of the 19thcentury laws were understood not to address the carry of guns in general but to curtail the freedom of blacks in particular. After the Civil War, the labor market in the South was a source of “considerable irritation” to the white landowning class. J. Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863– 1877, p. 90 (1974) (Taylor). Newly emancipated slaves were “prone to test [their] freedom by coming and going as [they] pleased,” ibid., and their liberty to forage, hunt, and fish for food reduced their incentive to work on plantations, see B. Sawers, Race and Property After the Civil War: Creating the Right To Exclude, 87 Miss. L. J. 703, 741–743 (2018) (Sawers). Now forced to compete for black labor, white landowners “resented” how blacks could provide for themselves, E. Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, p. 203…

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