December 24, 2025
(WASHINGTON) Following its amicus brief filed December 19, 2025, in U.S. v. Hemani, today Global Action on Gun Violence (GAGV) filed another amicus brief as part of its frontal attack on the Court’s recent extreme Second Amendment rulings. 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. The brief was authored by Jonathan Lowy and Jake Steisel of GAGV.
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.
GAGV president and founder Jonathan Lowy said, “At a time when firearm violence continues to take a devastating toll on American communities, the Supreme Court’s recent Second Amendment rulings threaten the ability of states to protect public safety, while ignoring the Framers’ text and purpose to protect state militias. The Court’s history-only test forces courts to act as amateur historians, and wrongly limits legislatures to 18th or 19th century solutions for 21st century gun problems. The Court should uphold Hawaii’s law, which reasonably promotes public safety, and protects property rights, without infringing on Second Amendment rights.”
GAGV’s brief contends:
- Heller was wrongly decided, and Bruen made the Second Amendment a super-right that overrides the other rights, while imposing an unworkable and unclear test that forces courts to play historian and only uphold modern gun regulations if sufficient historical analogues from the 18th and 19th centuries can be identified.
- The Bruen test should be replaced by the test applied post-Heller by all the federal courts of appeals, which allowed courts to balance Second Amendment rights against public safety and other competing rights.
- Under either the Bruen or the pre-Bruen framework, Hawaii’s law should be upheld. However, the pre-Bruen approach would allow courts to properly weigh Second Amendment rights against property owners’ historic and important right to exclude firearms from their premises.
- The Hawaii statute should be upheld because gun violence frequently takes place on type of private property open to the public that the Hawaii law regulates, and victims include individuals from both the U.S. and around the world.
- Gun violence in the U.S., including on private property open to the public, has a global impact, with many examples of foreign nationals killed by such violence.
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About Global Action on Gun Violence
Global Action on Gun Violence was founded August 31, 2022, as a non-profit organization dedicated to ending gun violence in the U.S. and throughout the world, using litigation, human rights, advocacy and messaging. GAGV work includes representing the Government of Mexico in anti-gun trafficking litigation, acting as foreign legal counsel in a Canadian gun lawsuit, and active in the United Nations, Organization of American States and other international bodies. GAGV’s President, Jon Lowy, has litigated Second Amendment and other gun cases for over 25 years.
Media Contact: Stephanie Lowet, email hidden; JavaScript is required