DEPARTMENT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL RELEASES ANNUAL “LICENSE TO CARRY” FIREARMS STATISTICS

News Release 2025-52 from Hawaii Attorney General, April 9, 2025 

HONOLULU – The Department of the Attorney General launched a new annual report series - Licenses to Carry Handguns in Hawaiʻi, 2024. HRS§ 134-9.6 requires county police departments to provide data on the licensing of private persons to carry a handgun to the Department of the Attorney General. The police data from the four reporting counties were compiled for calendar year 2024.

According to the report, on December 31, 2024, a statewide total of 2,207 private persons held a license to carry (LTC) a concealed handgun in public, comprising 0.2% of the state’s resident population of persons aged 20 or older. Licensees are overrepresented in Kauaʻi County (11.0% of statewide licensees compared to 5.1% of the state’s resident population) and Hawaiʻi County (19.3% and 14.5%, respectively) and commensurately underrepresented in the City and County of Honolulu and Maui County.

Hawai'i's licensees are most commonly male; in their 30s through 50s; and of Caucasian, Filipino, Hawaiian, or Japanese racial/ethnic descent. There are no meaningful distinctions in application submissions versus outcomes relative to age, sex, or race/ethnicity.

Throughout 2024, a statewide total of 2,697 LTC applications were received by the county police departments, while 2,456 licenses were issued (some licensees hold multiple licenses in order to select between different carry guns), 119 were denied, and six were revoked. These measurements reflect only the actions that occurred during calendar year 2024; some applications received later in the year were not completely processed by year’s end, so the applications are included in the 2024 report but the associated outcomes (i.e., issued, denied, and/or revoked LTCs) will be included accordingly in subsequent editions. Similarly, applications that were received in 2023 are not included, but all associated outcomes that occurred in 2024 are included in this report. Readers are thus cautioned against calculating precise approval, denial, or revocation rates, although increasingly confident estimates can be made as overlapping data for additional years are reported.

The top three categorical reasons for the 119 LTC denials in 2024 were that the applicants failed to: sign a required affidavit (24.7% of all denial reasons); complete application tasks within allowed timeframes (23.4%); and/or complete a prescribed training program and be certified to use the specific firearm in question (22.0%). Only 5.8% (16) of the denials were due to the applicants being legally disqualified from possessing firearms and ammunition.

Six LTCs were revoked statewide during 2024, including four in the City and County of Honolulu and one each in Hawaiʻi County and Maui County. The Honolulu and Hawaiʻi County revocations were due to the affected licensees being prosecuted for and/or convicted of disqualifying criminal offenses, while the Maui County revocation was made after the licensee was witnessed mishandling his firearm in public and later failed to announce to responding police officers his possession of a firearm and LTC.

Denied LTC applicants and revoked licensees may seek relief from those actions, first through an administrative appeal decided by the respective county police chief, and secondly, if needed, through a judicial review made by the Hawaiʻi State Judiciary. A total of 10 administrative appeals were requested statewide in 2024, with an even split of three being granted and three being denied by the police chiefs, while four others were not concluded by year’s end. The Judiciary reported that no LTC judicial reviews were requested in 2024.

The full report can be downloaded from the Department of the Attorney General’s Research and Statistics web site at http://ag.hawaii.gov/cpja/rs and here.

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SA: More than 2,200 in Hawaii now licensed to carry handguns in public | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

HTH: State AG releases handgun statistics - Hawaii Tribune-Herald

MN: Who’s packing concealed handguns? Not many in Maui County, AG report says : Maui Now