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Hawaii Supreme Court quotes “The Wire” in ruling on gun rights: “The thing about the old days, they the old days”
A ruling by Hawaii’s high court saying that a man can be prosecuted for carrying a gun in public without a permit cites crime-drama TV series “The Wire” and invokes the “spirit of Aloha” in an apparent rebuke of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that expanded gun rights nationwide.
“The thing about the old days, they the old days,” the unanimous Hawaii Supreme Court’s 53-page ruling issued Wednesday said, borrowing a quote from season four, episode three of the HBO series to express that the culture from the founding of the country shouldn’t dictate contemporary life.
“As the world turns, it makes no sense for contemporary society to pledge allegiance to the founding era’s culture, realities, laws, and understanding of the Constitution,” the ruling says before citing the hit HBO show.
Authored by Justice Todd Eddins, the opinion goes on to say, “The spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities. “
The ruling stems from a 2017 case against Christopher Wilson, who had a loaded pistol in his front waistband when police were called after a Maui landowner reported seeing a group of men on his property at night.
Marco Garcia / AP
The handgun was unregistered in Hawaii, and Wilson had not obtained or applied for a permit to own the gun, the ruling said. Wilson told police he legally bought the gun in Florida in 2013.
Wilson’s first motion to dismiss the charges argued that prosecuting him for possession of a firearm for self-defense violated his right to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It was denied.
Then in 2022, a U.S. Supreme Court decision known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen upended gun laws nationwide, including in Hawaii, which has long had some of the strictest gun laws in the country – and some of the lowest rates of gun violence.
Just as the Bruen decision came out, Wilson filed a second motion to dismiss the case. A judge granted the dismissal, and the state appealed.
Ben Lowenthal of the Hawaii public defender’s office, Wilson’s attorney, said Thursday his office is “taking stock of our options,” including seeking review from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wilson denied trespassing and said he and his friends “were hiking that night to look at the moon and Native Hawaiian plants,” according to the recent ruling.
“Not a well-reasoned opinion”
Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez hailed the ruling as a “landmark decision that affirms the constitutionality of crucial gun-safety legislation.”
The ruling reflects a “culture in Hawaii that’s very resistant to change” and a judiciary and government that has been “recalcitrant” in accepting Bruen, said Alan Beck, an attorney not involved in the Wilson case.
“The use of pop culture references to attempt to rebuke the Supreme Court’s detailed historical analysis is evidence this is not a well-reasoned opinion,” said Beck, who has challenged Hawaii’s gun restrictions.
Beck represents three Maui residents who are challenging a Hawaii law enacted last year that prohibits carrying a firearm on the beach and in other places, including banks, bars and restaurants that serve alcohol.
A federal judge in Honolulu granted a preliminary injunction, which prevents the state from enforcing the law. The state appealed, and oral arguments are scheduled for April before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bruen set a new standard for interpreting gun laws, such that modern firearm laws must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
“We believe it is a misplaced view to think that today’s public safety laws must look like laws passed long ago,” Eddins, of the Hawaii high court, wrote. “Smoothbore, muzzle-loaded, and powder-and-ramrod muskets were not exactly useful to colonial era mass murderers. And life is a bit different now, in a nation with a lot more people, stretching to islands in the Pacific Ocean.”
The Bruen ruling “snubs federalism principles,” Eddins wrote, asserting that under Hawaii’s constitution, there is no individual right to carry a firearm in public.
Dating back to the 1800s, when Hawaii was a kingdom, weapons were heavily regulated, Eddins wrote. He noted that in 1833 King Kamehameha III “promulgated a law prohibiting ‘any person or persons’ on shore from possessing a weapon, including any ‘knife, sword-cane, or any other dangerous weapon.'”
The new legal test laid out by the Bruen ruling has reshaped the legal landscape for firearms laws and led to uncertainty over whether measures that aim to curb gun violence can survive legal scrutiny.
“We’re seeing a lot of action and a lot of unpredictability when it comes to the Second Amendment after Bruen,” Joseph Blocher, co-director of Duke University’s Center for Firearms Law, told CBS News. “It’s happening in a bunch of different directions, and the source of the change is the new methodology that the Supreme Court announced in the Bruen case because it instructs courts to evaluate the constitutionality of laws based solely on whether they are in some ill-defined sense consistent with historical tradition.”
Melissa Quinn contributed to this report.
Police arrested a man on murder charges this month, 14 years after he allegedly killed a man in Virginia, but the victim’s body has never been found.
Shane Ryan Donahue, a Virginia man, is presumed deceased, the Prince William County Police Department said Tuesday. He was last seen leaving his parents’ home in Nokesville, Virginia, on March 22, 2010. Donahue, 23, was headed to his house in Nokesville, but never made it there.
Donahue was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System after he vanished. According to records, Donahue did not have a car and regularly got rides from friends. He frequented Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Fauquier County, Virginia, and Northern Virginia.
The case stumped investigators, who followed a number of leads over the years. This spring, detectives reactivated the investigation and started looking at every detail of the case from scratch, officials said. They revisited people who had been interviewed during the initial investigation and reviewed “digital evidence in greater detail due to advances in analytical technology and modern police investigative practices,” according to a news release.
Officers said Donahue was last seen leaving his parents’ home with Timothy Sean Hickerson, now a 43-year-old Florida resident. Investigators connected Hickerson to a burglary at Donahue’s home that happened just days before the Virginia man disappeared.
Detectives got an arrest warrant this month and, with the help of Florida’s Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Hickerson was taken into custody in Palm Coast, Florida. Hickerson was charged with murder and burglary, is now set to be extradited to Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump, an avowed proponent of tax cuts, is floating the idea of reversing a measure passed during his tenure in the White House that effectively raised taxes for many U.S. homeowners.
In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump suggested he would scrap a $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes (SALT) that was passed as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a massive revamp that he has said boosted economic growth.
Now, in the run-up to the November election, Trump said in the post he would “get SALT back, lower your taxes, and so much more,” although he stopped short of offering details. Trump made the post ahead of a speech he’s giving Wednesday at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Trump’s new proposal for getting rid of his $10,000 SALT deduction cap comes as the presidential hopeful is pitching several additional tax cuts that would, if enacted, reduce taxes for major groups of voters. He’s also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, a pledge that could get support from the nation’s senior citizens, as well as to end income taxes on tipped workers and on overtime pay, ideas that would help lower- and middle-income Americans.
Yet Trump’s reversal on the SALT deduction has sparked skepticism from lawmakers as well as economists and policy experts.
“So … now Trump is against the SALT tax cap which *checks notes* is a key part of the — only — major piece of legislation passed during his administration?” noted Chris Koski, a political science professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, on X.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Nassau, Queens, said in a statement on Wednesday that he is “happy that the former president is saying that he has finally reversed his devastating decision in 2017 to cap the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction.” He also urged Trump to convince Republican lawmakers to vote to restore the full deduction “if he is truly serious.”
The SALT deduction cap “has been a body blow to my constituents for the past 7 years,” Suozzi added.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote on X,”Donald Trump took away your SALT dedications and hurt so many Long Island families. Now, he’s coming to Long Island to pretend he supports SALT. It won’t work.”
Asked for details about Trump’s proposal to restore the SALT writeoff, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told CBS MoneyWatch: “While his pro-growth, pro-energy policies will make life affordable again, President Trump is also going to quickly move tax relief for working people and seniors.”
Here’s what to know about the SALT deduction.
What is the SALT deduction?
The state and local tax deduction allows taxpayers who itemize to deduct property taxes, sales taxes and state or local income taxes from their federal income taxes. Prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there was no limit on how much people could deduct through the SALT deduction.
But the 2017 tax overhaul passed under Trump limited the deduction to $10,000 – a blow to many homeowners in states with high property taxes, many of which are Democratic leaning. At the time of the law’s passage, the Treasury Department estimated that almost 11 million taxpayers in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey would forfeit $323 billion in deductions.
Who benefits from the SALT deduction?
Homeowners with high property taxes, such as people in New York, New Jersey and California, were the biggest beneficiaries of the the full SALT deduction.
But some experts also noted that the SALT deduction primarily put more money in the pockets of higher-earning Americans. About 80% of the full SALT deduction had helped people earning more than $100,000 a year, according to the Tax Foundation.
What happened after Trump capped the SALT deduction at $10,000?
The limit has increasingly impacted middle-class homeowners across the U.S. because of rising property taxes and incomes. Some lawmakers have also sought to either repeal or increase the SALT cap, but none of those efforts have borne fruit.
Earlier this year, some lawmakers sought to double the SALT deduction cap to $20,000 for married couples, with the change retroactive for the 2023 tax year. But that bill was blocked in the House in February.
Won’t the SALT deduction cap expire anyway?
Yes, the SALT deduction cap is a provision that’s due to expire in 2025, as are many other parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, such as a reduction of the individual tax brackets. But Trump has previously indicated he wants to extend the provisions in his signature tax law.
How much would it cost the U.S. to repeal the SALT deduction cap?
It won’t be cheap, according to the the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on budget and policy issues.
Eliminating the $10,000 deduction limit “would increase the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) by $1.2 trillion over a decade,” the group estimates, adding that such a measure would be a “costly mistake.”
Extending the TCJA’s tax cuts would increase the nation’s deficit by $3.9 trillion over the next decade, the group estimates. By adding in a expiration or repeal of the SALT deduction cap, that would grow to $5.1 trillion, it added.
“Lawmakers should not extend the TCJA without a plan to – at a minimum – offset the costs of extension, but ideally the plan would raise revenues relative to current law and help put the nation’s debt on a better trajectory,” the group said in a statement.
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