Today, the Hawaii State Legislature adjourned sine die. Unfortunately, on Tuesday, May 3, the Hawaii State Legislature passed Senate Bill 2647, which will now join House Bill 625 and Senate Bill 2954 on Governor Ige’s desk for his consideration.
It is imperative that you contact the Governor immediately and politely urge him to veto all three of these egregious bills!
SB 2647 would ban the sale, purchase, barter, and possession with intent to sell of any legally owned ivory (defined to include mammoth ivory), ivory product, rhinoceros horn, rhinoceros horn product and products from various other animal species, absent limited exceptions. To read more about ivory ban legislation, please refer to NRA-ILA’s Ivory Ban Fact Sheet.
SB 2954 would expand the existing registration requirement and input law-abiding Hawaii gun owners into a federal biometric database, managed by the FBI, for continuous monitoring. The exercise of an individual’s Second Amendment rights is not inherently suspicious and should not require a person to surrender other civil liberties, including unwarranted invasions of privacy or unequal treatment under the law. The lawful acquisition, possession, carrying, or use of a firearm does not justify subjecting citizens to ongoing monitoring.
HB 625 would expand prohibited possessors to include certain misdemeanor crimes. 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.
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