Tomorrow, March 15, three anti-gun bills are scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Public Safety Committee. Please contact the members of the Senate Public Safety, Intergovernmental, and Military Affairs Committee and urge them to OPPOSE these bills! Click the “Take Action” button below to contact the committee members!
House Bill 625 would expand prohibited possessors to include certain misdemeanor crimes. Under this bill, sending unwanted text messages and emails could qualify someone for misdemeanor stalking and possibly result in an individual being denied a constitutional right. Constitutional rights are generally restricted only upon conviction of a felony. The reasons for this are two-fold. It limits restrictions on constitutional rights to only the most serious offenses, and, perhaps more importantly, felony convictions provide greater procedural protections to the accused, which results in more reliable convictions. The right to keep and bear arms should not be treated as a second-class right and should be restricted only upon conviction of a felony like the right to vote, to serve on a jury, and to hold public office.
Further, by including a new category of prohibited possessors for certain misdemeanor crimes some citizens who may have taken a plea deal years ago will also become prohibited overnight and not been apprised of this additional penalty when taking their deal or fighting their case. Gun owners may not even know they are prohibited under this new statute until they renew their permit and discover that they are now in violation of the law due to a misdemeanor crime that occurred many years ago.
House Bill 626 would establish a petty misdemeanor for drinking alcohol while possessing a firearm. HB 626 does not set a limit for the amount of alcohol an individual can legally consume while in possession of a firearm. Without this specification, any amount of alcohol consumption while in possession of a firearm could constitute a crime. Individuals who possess a firearm and have had a couple sips of wine or anything containing alcohol, like Nyquil, could be in violation of the law.
House Bill 2629 would expand the existing registration requirement to implement a federal biometric registry of Hawaii gun owners. Positive hits in this system have not necessarily been adjudicated and could cause issues with an individual’s ability to exercise their constitutional rights. Additionally, this could result in a potential fee increase and cost gun owners more than what is already required in Hawaii due to the cost associated with adding individuals into this biometric registry.
Once again, please click the “Take Action” button above to contact members of the Senate Public Safety, Intergovernmental, and Military Affairs Committee and politely urge them to OPPOSE these bills!
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