The Senate hears two bills Thursday afternoon, 2/12/15.

by Dr. Maxwell Cooper, Hawaii Rifle Association Legislative Liaison, February 10, 2015

The worst bill of the decade, SB 783, is heard in a Joint Hearing of the Senate Committees on Transportation and Public Safety starting at 2:45pm.

Senator Maile Shimabukuro (D-Waianae) has introduced this terribly restrictive anti-Second Amendment bill.  Please submit testimony, and come to the hearing and deliver it if you can. See the hearing notice for bill language, history, and to send testimony.

SB783 requires that when you apply for a firearms permit you must swear in writing that neither you or any of your family or household has now or in the past "certain mental disorders."

If you don't swear so, you must lock up and secure or turn in all firearms and ammunition within 48 hours or pay a fine of $50 per day. 

SB783 requires that failure to pay child or spousal support is cause for revocation of a firearm permit (which means also turn in all firearms and ammunition that you already have).

If you are ever arrested and refuse a breath, blood, or urine test, you must turn in or dispose of all your firearms within 48hrs.

Law enforcement officers are exempted from all provisions.

HRA STRONGLY OPPOSES.  There are already sufficient laws in Hawaii on safe storage of firearms, mental health background checks, and ways to go after "dead-beat dads," and drunk drivers without such severe infringements on individual civil rights.

SB674.   Ban on Ivory sales in Hawaii

The Senate Energy and Environment and Commerce and Consumer Protection Committees have scheduled a joint hearing on

SB 674,  a ban on Ivory sales in Hawaii (Same as HB837 heard in the House today and passed with amendments).  Please submit testimony.  If you sent in on HB837, you may update it and send it again to this hearing.  Come to the hearing and deliver it if you can, please.  Take your pick, both hearings start at 2:45pm.  See the hearing notice at: LINK

HRA OPPOSES .  Elephant populations in sub-equatorial Africa in areas with good habitat development and game management policies are healthy and increasing in numbers according to the World Wildlife Fund web site, 2015.      

In impoverished African areas with no political stability elephant populations are threatened with extinction. This bill will not alter poaching in those areas.  Bans are price supports for illegal activity there.  Confiscated ivory and ivory harvested to protect subsistence farming and habitat degradation should be and is marketed to fund habitat improvement and anti-poaching enforcement.

This bill makes criminals of anyone with antique gun grips or sight beads, musical instruments, scrimshaw, hatpins, or jewelry bearing small amounts of ivory from any source harvested long ago and offered for sale or transfer other than by inheritance.  Appraisal as an antique, produced before 1989, or lawfully harvested, should be exemptions or represent an affirmative defense.