The Supreme Court’s latest Second Amendment ruling did more than strike down a Hawaii firearm restriction — it reignited a debate over how far governments should go to defend modern gun laws and whether some historical precedents should never have made it into the argument at all.

In a 6–3 decision in Wolford v. Lopez, the Court ruled that Hawaii cannot force licensed concealed-carry holders to obtain express permission before carrying firearms onto private property that is open to the public.

Gun-rights advocates had labeled the policy the “vampire rule” because lawful carriers effectively had to be invited in before entering businesses while armed.

But after the ruling, one of the attorneys behind the challenge argued the legal battle exposed something even more significant than the policy itself.

Kevin O’Grady, who represented the plaintiffs, sharply criticized Hawaii’s decision to defend the restriction using a historical law tied to the post–Civil War Black Codes.

“It is disgraceful that any state would rely on a law specifically aimed at taking away the Second Amendment rights or any constitutional right of Black Americans as it was at that time,” O’Grady said.

“And it's not surprising, however, that Hawaii would rely on it as they are diametrically opposed to the Second Amendment.”

The dispute centered on the legal framework established by the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Under Bruen, courts evaluating firearm regulations generally examine whether modern restrictions align with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

To support its case, Hawaii pointed to several historical examples — including an 1865 Louisiana statute enacted during Reconstruction.

That law prohibited carrying firearms onto another person’s property without consent.

The problem, according to the majority: context matters.

Writing for the Court, Justice Samuel Alito rejected reliance on that Louisiana law and described it as a “tainted artifact,” concluding it had been enacted in part to disarm newly freed Black Americans after the Civil War.

Alito wrote that the statute “cannot be taken seriously” as evidence of the Second Amendment’s original public meaning.

The majority’s message was clear: not every historical law qualifies as a legitimate constitutional guide simply because it existed.

The dissent approached the issue differently.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not defend the Black Codes and explicitly acknowledged their racist history and role in oppressing freed Black Americans.

But she argued the Court skipped an important analytical step.

Jackson questioned whether the Court first needed to determine whether the firearm restriction itself violated the Second Amendment — or whether the constitutional defect arose from discriminatory enforcement.

“It might well be that the Black Codes are invalid inputs for Bruen’s test,” Jackson wrote, “but only if they violated the Second Amendment — which may or may not be the case.”

She outlined two possibilities: either the restrictions themselves were constitutional but enforced unequally, creating an equal-protection problem, or the restrictions independently violated the Second Amendment.

Her criticism was procedural rather than a defense of the historical law itself.

For supporters of the ruling, however, the broader takeaway was straightforward.

If courts are going to look to history to interpret constitutional rights, they cannot treat every historical restriction as equally legitimate — especially when some were designed to deny constitutional protections to disfavored groups.

That debate extends far beyond firearms.

Because once constitutional rights become dependent on the worst examples in history, Americans eventually have to ask whether history is being used to protect liberty — or to justify limiting it.