Hawaii Used Contract Law to Keep 18-Year-Olds Unarmed — and Closed the Case

On August 31, 2026, U.S. District Judge Jill A. Otake (D. Hawaii, Civ. No. 24-00496 JAO-WRP) denied the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and granted Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez’s counter-motion. The clerk was directed to enter judgment for the State and close the case. Remaining plaintiffs: Juda Roache, Aloha Strategics LLC, JGB Arms LLC, and the Second Amendment Foundation. Elijah Pinales was dismissed earlier. The statutes are HRS § 134-2 (no acquisition by purchase, gift, inheritance, or otherwise without a permit, and permits only at 21) and the ammunition restrictions in § 134-7.

Quote: “The Court is satisfied that 18- to 20-year-olds are part of ‘the people.’” The court also held that an acquisition ban implicates the right to “keep” arms. That should have been Hawaii’s problem under Bruen. Instead Otake used the common-law infancy doctrine — the old rule that contracts with people under 21 were generally voidable — as a historical analogue for a modern criminal prohibition. She found the Founding-era record on parental gifts “ambiguous,” then put more weight on late-19th-century pistol laws and what the Ninth Circuit has called a “more nuanced approach.” Most of those old statutes targeted pistols. Hawaii bars rifles, shotguns, handguns, and ammunition.

Roache is over 18 and under 21, lives in Honolulu, and would apply for a permit, buy guns and ammunition, and accept a firearm from his mother. The State did not claim any disqualifier except age. The court discounted the Militia Act of 1792 — enrollment at 18, appear armed — as an obligation, not a right, and said it found the Fifth Circuit’s Reese decision less persuasive than the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits. Adults under 21 do not lose the Second Amendment at a circuit boundary. This order pretends they do. It is a district-court judgment. It is not the last word.