Hawaii’s legislature has been reading the tea leaves — and they don’t like what they see. Wolford v. Lopez, 116 F.4th 959 (9th Cir. 2024), cert. granted in part, 146 S. Ct. 79 (2025), is the case challenging the state’s so-called “vampire rule”: the provision that bars concealed-carry permit holders from bringing a firearm onto any privately owned property open to the public unless they first obtain permission from an owner or manager. Attorney Alan Beck argued for the petitioners at oral argument on January 20, 2026, with the Trump administration’s Acting Solicitor General, Sarah M. Harris, appearing alongside him in support. The Supreme Court is going to strike this down — maybe 5–4, maybe 6–2, but it’s a win. And Hawaii knows it.
So what does Hawaii do when it knows it’s about to get spanked by SCOTUS? It takes a page straight out of New York’s post-Bruen playbook.
The New York Blueprint, Island Edition
After the Supreme Court’s 6–3 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022) demolished New York’s “proper cause” licensing requirement, Albany didn’t accept the loss. Governor Kathy Hochul convened an emergency session and rushed through the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, piling on sensitive-places restrictions and creating presumptive gun-free zones across the state. The strategy: even if you can’t win on the main rule, choke off the right everywhere else.
Hawaii is running the same play. Enter Senate Bill 3041, introduced January 23, 2026. SB3041 would require every business and restaurant open to the public to post a color-coded placard at the entrance: green for no firearms or large knives, yellow for one but not both, red for allowing firearms and large knives. The Hawaii Department of Law Enforcement would distribute free downloadable placards, and every business owner would have to pick a color by January 1, 2027.
Read that again. Every gas station. Every laundromat. Every hot-dog cart. Every owner who has probably never given five seconds of thought to the gun debate is now being told by the government: take a side, and display it publicly.
The First Amendment Problem Hawaii Is Ignoring
There is a long line of First Amendment doctrine holding that the government cannot compel private citizens or businesses to espouse a political position. There are narrow exceptions — purely factual commercial disclosures, caloric content on menus, certain professional-services notices — but those carve-outs exist precisely because the speech is factual and operational, not a declaration of where someone stands on a live public-policy controversy.
Whether to allow firearms on your premises is not a neutral factual matter. It is one of the most politically charged questions in American life right now. Forcing every business in Hawaii to publicly declare yes or no is compelling political speech. That is constitutionally suspect on its face.
And here is the practical reality for any business owner: there is no good answer. Post the green placard and you lose gun-owning customers. Post the red placard and you alienate the anti-gun crowd. Why would anyone who sells groceries or runs a car wash want to be dragged into this fight? The government is manufacturing a controversy for thousands of business owners who want no part of it.
The Deterrence Hole SB3041 Would Create
I keep coming back to Cesare Beccaria — the 18th-century Italian criminologist whose On Crimes and Punishments (1764) argued that disarming law-abiding citizens does nothing to deter criminals; it just shifts the advantage to whoever is willing to break the law. Thomas Jefferson copied Beccaria’s language verbatim into his commonplace book. John Adams quoted him at length defending the British soldiers at the Boston Massacre trial in 1770. This was not fringe thinking — it was foundational to how the Founders understood armed self-defense.
SB3041 proves Beccaria right in a particularly vivid way. A criminal casing storefronts would have a government-mandated map of which locations are armed and which are not. The green placard is practically a welcome sign. The element of uncertainty that makes concealed carry a deterrent — the would-be robber who doesn’t know whether anyone in that store is armed — evaporates the moment every business is forced to publish its policy on the door.
The Property-Rights Argument Collapses Under Its Own Weight
Hawaii’s lawyers stood before the Supreme Court in Wolford and argued, with a straight face, that the vampire rule protects property owners’ right to choose whether to allow firearms on their premises. My response: the state has already decided dozens of those choices for property owners through its sweeping sensitive-places regime — bars, medical offices, athletic facilities, and roughly 25 other categories are government-mandated gun-free zones regardless of what the owner wants. If Hawaii actually cared about property-owner autonomy, it would not have built a system that overrides those owners whenever it suits the state. The property-rights argument is window dressing, and SB3041 strips away even that veneer.
Hawaii’s Real Message to Business Owners
There is also a long and honorable American tradition of anonymous political speech — the Federalist Papers were published under the pseudonym “Publius”; Anti-Federalist essays appeared under names like “Cato” and “Federal Farmer.” The whole point was that private citizens should be able to engage in political discourse without the government pinning their views to their front door. SB3041 is the precise inversion of that tradition: state-compelled, public, named-business disclosure of a position on one of the most divisive political debates in the country.
Hawaii is not going to win Wolford v. Lopez. And SB3041, if it survives past introduction, is going to generate its own constitutional challenge — probably a strong one. The state is piling a First Amendment problem on top of the Second Amendment loss that is already on the way. That is not a legal strategy. That is spite dressed up as legislation.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.