Wolford v. Lopez
In its amicus brief in Wolford v. Lopez, GAGV contends that while the challenged Hawaii law should be upheld under any test, the Court should overrule the extreme Bruen decision—which elevates Heller’s invented right into a super-right and imposes a test for firearms regulation that is unworkable and unclear in practice—and reinstate the test unanimously applied by the federal courts of appeals pre-Bruen, which allowed courts to balance Second Amendment rights with the government’s interest in public safety.
GAGV’s brief also makes the case that any Second Amendment rights implicated by Hawaii’s statute establishing a presumption that concealed carry is unlawful on private property open to the public, like hotels and restaurants, must be balanced against the property rights of the owners.
U.S. v. Hemani
In its amicus brief in U.S. v. Hemani, a marijuana user’s challenge to the federal ban on possession by drug abusers, GAGV argues that the Court should overrule both the Heller decision that overturned the two centuries-old militia-focused reading of the Second Amendment, and the extreme Bruen decision—which requires courts to play historian and only approve laws that are sufficiently analogous to laws in place hundreds of years ago.
GAGV asks the Court to reinstate the test unanimously applied by the federal courts of appeals pre-Bruen, which allowed courts to balance Second Amendment rights with the government’s interest in public safety.
U.S. v. Rahimi
On June 24, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States, by an 8-1 vote, rejected a Second Amendment challenge to the federal law banning persons subject to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing firearms. In an amicus brief, GAGV argued that the law should be upheld, as did other groups.
However, GAGV was the only major gun violence prevention group to argue that the Supreme Court should also reverse its decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and NYSRPA v. Bruen.
In the 2008 Heller decision, the Court overturned 200 years of precedent that recognized the Second Amendment’s intended meaning to protect state militias. In the 2022 Bruen decision, the Court held that gun laws required some historical analogue to be constitutional. The Court did not take up GAGV’s call to reverse Heller or Bruen.