Territory Court Guts Gun Rights

A U.S. territory's top court just ruled the Second Amendment doesn't exist within its borders, and almost nobody noticed.

State of play: In October 2024, the High Court of American Samoa ruled that because the territory is "unincorporated," the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms simply doesn't apply there. The decision let a near-total gun ban take effect. It happened quietly, with none of the media attention that followed the Supreme Court's recent Wolford v. Lopez ruling striking down Hawaii's restrictive concealed-carry scheme.

American Samoa isn't like other U.S. territories. Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands all have federal district courts with Senate-confirmed Article IV judges serving ten-year terms — courts where citizens or the Justice Department can sue over constitutional violations. The DOJ did exactly that last year, suing the U.S. Virgin Islands over gun restrictions that ran afoul of the Second Amendment.

American Samoa has none of that. No federal court exists there. The High Court of American Samoa is the final word, and its justices don't get life tenure or Senate confirmation — they're appointed and removable at will by the Secretary of the Interior under the territory's constitution. That setup traces back to 48 U.S.C. § 1661, which hands the president civil, military and judicial control over the territory, and a 1951 Truman executive order delegating that authority to Interior.

The intrigue: that same statute that let the court strip Second Amendment protections also gives the president direct authority to reverse it — no lawsuit required. Legal scholars note federal courts have upheld presidential override authority over American Samoa's High Court in multiple cases, though the Supreme Court has never ruled squarely on the question. President Trump could, in theory, fire the current justices, appoint replacements who respect the Constitution, and issue an executive order affirming the Second Amendment applies there with the same force it does in all fifty states.

The case is also a reminder of how far some courts will go to dodge Bruen and its progeny. Hawaii tried the "Aloha Spirit" and pre-statehood history to justify locking law-abiding gun owners out of private property without a posted sign. The Supreme Court wasn't buying it. American Samoa's court didn't bother with a creative rationale at all — it just declared the amendment doesn't reach the territory.

What to watch: whether the administration treats this as the emergency gun-rights advocates say it is. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum holds the appointment power over the High Court's justices, and Trump's DOJ has already shown it will sue territories over gun restrictions. The tools to reverse this exist on paper. Whether they get used is a political question now, not a legal one.

The bottom line: a U.S. territory with roughly 45,000 residents just declared itself exempt from the Bill of Rights, and the fix doesn't require a single judge, brief or circuit appeal — just a signature.