Wolford v. Lopez · ¶188

Here, Hawaii has presented evidence that, even though the relevant gun restriction was a Black Code, it violated the Fourteenth Amendment but not the Second—evidence the majority ignores. For example, when General Sickles announced the end of South Carolina’s laws prohibiting gun possession by Black people in 1866, he declared: “The constitutional rights of all loyal and well-disposed inhabitants to bear arms will not be infringed.” D. Sickles, General Order No. 1 in A Handbook of Politics for 1868, p. 37 (E. McPherson ed. 1868). But he did not consider laws requiring express consent for armed entry—even those enacted as part of the Black Codes—among the laws that had offended the Second Amendment. Rather, in his view, no person (of any race) had the right to carry a firearm onto private land without consent. Ibid. In this same way, it appears that the Louisiana analogue on which Hawaii…

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