Maybe someone already mentioned all this, but basically it boils down to should the Aboriginal peoples have more special treatment over gun rights and gun ownership.
Tama Talum found a 12 gauge breech-loading shutgun on a river bed, July of 2013. Taiwan’s current laws allow Aboriginal peoples to use muzzle-loading rifle to hunt, and recognize it as tradition.
He used the rifle he found and killed a muntjac and a serow that August because his mother wanted to have some traditional game meat in her poor health.
He was sentenced to 3 years and 2 months for owning that rifle, and 7 months for hunting protected animals.
The Justices of Constitutional Court ruled that most of the laws are constitutional, but portions of The Regulations Governing Permission and Management of Guns, Ammunition, Knives and Weapons act and The Regulations Governing Permission and Management of Indigenous Traditional Cultural and Ritualistic Hunting, Killing, and Usage of Wildlife act are unconstitutional.
In short, the ruling still consider Tama Talum owning and using the breech loading rifle illegal, however, despite the protected nature of the animals he hunted, since it was for private consumption due to cultural reasons, that part should be legal.
President Tsai’s pardon basically absolves Tama Talum’s charges of owning and using the rifle illegally. This pardon marks the 7th pardon since enacting the constitution.
However, many Indigenous activists wanted more than that. They wanted it to be legal for the Indigenous peoples to own breech-loading rifles as well. Their reason is that hunting rifles are all breech-loading now, and limiting Indigenous hunters to only use muzzle-loading rifles means they would have to build new rifles themselves which ends up being incredibly accident prone, resulting in needless loss of lives.
This pardon absolutely doesn’t address the demand to legalize breech-loading hunting rifles.
