In a jaw-dropping moment during oral arguments in *Wolford v. Lopez*—a case challenging Hawaii’s draconian gun laws—Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson invoked the infamous Black Codes of the post-Civil War South as potential precedent to uphold the state’s restrictive carry regime. For those unfamiliar, Black Codes were discriminatory statutes enacted by Southern states in the 1860s to disarm freed Black Americans, severely limiting their right to bear arms while whites faced no such barriers. Jackson’s argument? These racist relics might somehow validate Hawaii’s modern-day prohibitions on public carry, framing them as a historical tradition of regulation rather than the infringements they clearly are. It’s a stunning pivot: equating gun rights protections with the tools of oppression that the 14th Amendment was designed to dismantle.
This isn’t just legal theater; it’s a red flag for the Second Amendment community. Jackson’s nod to Black Codes flips the script on *Bruen*’s history-and-tradition test, which demands gun laws align with our nation’s founding-era practices—not cherry-picked discriminatory outliers from Reconstruction. By dredging up these relics, she’s implicitly arguing that governments have long had carte blanche to disarm undesirables, whether they be freed slaves in 1866 or law-abiding Hawaiians today. The implications are chilling: if Black Codes pass muster, what’s to stop expansive sensitive places doctrines or assault weapon bans from citing other ugly historical footnotes? Pro-2A advocates should watch this closely—*Wolford* could test *Bruen*’s guardrails, and Jackson’s rhetoric underscores the activist bench’s willingness to rewrite history to erode the right to keep and bear arms.
For the 2A faithful, this is rally-the-troops material. Hawaii’s laws already treat self-defense as a privilege for the elite, and Jackson’s defense risks normalizing disarmament under the guise of tradition. Share this widely, contact your reps, and brace for a ruling that could either fortify *Bruen* or invite more judicial gymnastics. The fight for concealed carry in paradise—and nationwide—is far from over.
