The 'Vampire" Rule

After the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision recognized a right to carry handguns in public for self-defense, Hawaii passed a 2023 law with a new default rule: licensed concealed-carry permit holders could not bring a gun onto private property that is open to the public, such as a restaurant or store, unless the owner expressly gave permission. Gun-rights advocates nicknamed it the “vampire rule,” because, like a vampire, a gun carrier needed an invitation to come in. Violating it was a misdemeanor.

A group of Maui residents and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition sued. A federal judge blocked the rule in 2023, but the Ninth Circuit reversed and upheld it, and it declined to rehear the case in January 2025. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in October 2025, limited to the private-property question, heard argument on January 20, 2026, and issued its decision on June 25, 2026, in an opinion by Justice Alito.

The gun owners argued that Hawaii had flipped a longstanding rule. At common law, people have an implied license to enter property open to the public unless the owner says otherwise, and Hawaii had reversed that for people carrying guns. Because the state could point to no historical tradition supporting it, they said, the rule violated the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.

Hawaii argued that its law was really about property rights, not gun rights. Owners could always keep guns out, the state said, and the rule just required them to be clear about it. It also pointed to its own “spirit of Aloha” and to older laws it said supported the rule as historical analogues.

A 6–3 Court sided with the gun owners, holding that Hawaii may not bar licensed carriers from bringing handguns onto private property open to the public unless the owner gives express permission. Justice Alito wrote that the rule places severe restrictions on the daily lives of residents who have already met Hawaii’s strict permit requirements, and that it departs sharply from the common-law default. He rejected the argument that Hawaii’s local customs could change the meaning of the Second Amendment, which he said applies the same way in every state. The Court also rejected Hawaii’s historical analogues, including an 1865 Louisiana law from the Black Codes that was used to disarm Black residents. Property owners remain free to post signs keeping guns out of their businesses.

Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined the majority. Justice Barrett also wrote separately to address Hawaii’s claim that the case was only about property law. Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, dissented, arguing that this was a property-rights question and that Hawaii had offered plenty of historical examples of states requiring a gun carrier to get an owner’s consent. Justice Kagan wrote a separate dissent.

The decision threatens similar default rules in other states that responded to Bruen the same way. It does not touch bans in sensitive places such as schools or polling places, and it leaves owners with the power to say no. But the practical effect is to flip the presumption: in places like stores and restaurants, a permit holder can now walk in armed unless the owner has said otherwise.