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Hawaii Gun Laws In Question Following Lawsuit

August 30, 2011 by  

The members of the organization are contesting the State's gun laws, which are some of the strictest in the country.A lawsuit was filed in Hawaii on behalf of the Hawaii Defense Foundation, as the members of the organization are seeking to reform the State’s harsh gun laws, specifically the restrictions concerning the lack of a right to carry a firearm in public, KITV Hawaii reported.

The members of the organization are contesting the State’s gun laws, which are some of the strictest in the country. Christopher Baker, founder of the club, filed the lawsuit in an effort to protect the 2nd Amendment rights of the people of Hawaii and to ensure that residents will be able to protect themselves, reported the news outlet.

“It was decided a long time ago that everyone, every person has that ability,” the attorney for the organization told KITV. “So it isn’t really up for discussion any more than any of the other amendments are.”

The current law in Hawaii dictates that firearms can only be carried by those who have received licenses that are issued in exceptional circumstances or where there is a need or urgency that has been sufficiently indicated. These restrictions may act as a direct violation of the laws that this country was founded on, according to Hawaii Reporter.

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  • http://?? Joe H.

    Not to change the subject, but I’m asking all northeast Ohioans to contact congressman Steven LaTourette and ask him why he cancelled an appointment with a Veteran of VietNam who has diabetes, brain tumors, is almost paralised on one side of his body from Agent Orange. His assistant told the vet and his wife, both seniors that Mr Latourette was more worried about the illegal aliens in northeast Ohio. I guess a man that served his country honorably and bravely, isn’t important enough to Mr LaTourette. This vet gets 210.00 a month!!! I know diabetics that use insulin that get 243.00!!! This is a disgrace and a slap in the face to ALL vets that have fought for this country!

  • Speak2Truth

    I am spending some time on Maui to work on projects and took an interest in finding local places to shoot. Once I started asking around, I learned just how restrictive this Democrat-controlled State is. It’s at least as bad as the Communist State of California.

    I’ve been to enough Democrat/Communist meetings and I’m sick of hearing them talk about “the masses” as cattle to be managed, controlled and fleeced. This is not American. This is the ideology against which Americans have fought and bled for decades trying to defend themselves and others – yet it has taken root and controls our own government offices now. They happily wear their Che Guevara T-shirts, praise Mao and Castro and hand out communist literature at their gatherings.

    Guess who really won the Cold War?

  • The Wolf

    Only criminals are allowed to carry firearms with out a licenses.they say we dont need no stinking licenses.every body knows that.and you want to protect your self.no we cant have any of that in Hawaii

    • James

      Criminals aren’t allowed to carry without a license, they simply get away with it.

      • Vicki

        They ARE allowed to carry without a license because to require them to get a license would violate their 5th amendment right to be free of self incrimination.

        Supreme Court decision U.S. v. Haynes (1968)
        http://www.nraila.org/Issues/Articles/Read.aspx?id=22&issue=006

      • James

        Vicki, Every State has laws which prohibit convicted felons from possessing firearms, and the Supreme Court has never challenged that. More specifically, no state law has ever been held violative of the Second Amendment, for the simple reason that it applies exclusively to the federal government.

  • old sarge

    Hawaii accually had very easy access to guns till 8 Dec 1980 when Chapman bought the gun that killed John Lennon in a gun shop in Honolulu. In typical liberal knee jerk fashion they then put some of the most restictive gun laws on the books. Hawaii politians tend to left of the Democrates just look at the current govoener. Anyways the laws there just prove that like drugs gun ownership and possition laws only affect the law abiding people in the world and not criminals. You know in Hawaii you have to regester ammo sales, at least on Maui I have friends there that I shoot with.
    Well Aloha Old Sarge

    • James

      Old sarge, Our problem here is that Hawaiians don’t know their constitution prohibits such laws. Someone needs to file a lawsuit in a State court there and challenge such laws. A general rule is that such Plaintiffs need to have been harmed by such law, and most States use their police power to restrict guns being carried openly in public.

      • Vicki

        Isn’t that rather the point of the original article?
        “A lawsuit was filed in Hawaii on behalf of the Hawaii Defense Foundation,….”

      • James

        Thank you, I missed that.

    • Palin12

      Chapman should have been executed. He’s not even as good a creation as a maggot.

  • dan

    It always comes down to : you only have the rights that you are willing to exercise…and keep government from usurping.

    • Huapakechi

      And you’d better believe, that which is not exercised will atrophy!

    • James

      Dan, That’s right. The Bill of Rights’ restrictions were added to the U.S. Constitution in 1791. Yet Congress passed the National Firearms Act of 1934, and The Gun Control Act of 1968, did anyone take that to court? The First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting” the five rights mention therein. The Ninth jAmendment that restriction applies to all rights whether enumerated therein jor not. And the Tenth Amendment says: “Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, orto the people.”

      • Vicki

        The thing to notice is that the first amendment was directed at congress and not the states. All the other amendments read as though they are meant for ALL government at ANY level. The 14th really only applies to the first amendment cause it says CONGRESS shall make no law….. The states have legislators not congress.

        9 is particurly interesting as it reminds us that PEOPLE have rights. Not governments.

        10 emphasizes this by reminding us that states have powers and people have powers.

        Thus it is easy to conclude the obvious. People have rights and powers.
        Government has only those powers that the people choose to delegate to government. The Bill of Rights specifies a set of powers we are NOT allowed to delegate to government even if we wanted too.

        This all becomes quite obvious when you remember that the Constitution is a set of limits on government not on people.

      • James

        Vicki, either you or someone else has suggested that before. The Preamble to the Bill of Rights reads: “The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added.” The entire Bill of Rights are restrictions the States placed upon the federal government they just created two years before.

      • Paul Smith

        The States have let us down terribly. You know that the government is not going to self-enforce so the States MUST apply the 9th and 10th Amendments to unconstitutional laws.

  • James

    You at the Personal Liberty News Desk need to get your heads on straight. The Hawaii Constitution, Article I, Section 17 reads: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Hawaiians have the unalienable right to bear arms, their constitution says so. The Second Amendment is only a similar restriction on the federal government. Our right to bear arms is not a Second Amendment right, it’s an unalienable right from our creator.

    • Lost in Paradise

      Do you currently reside in Hawaii?

    • independent thinker

      James did you even read the article? It clearly states that Hawaiians “right to keep and bear arms” are being infronged upon despite what the Hawaiian constitution says. Besides the Supreme court has ruled the Second Amendment in the US constitution applies to the states as well as the feds.

      • James

        Independent thinker, State constitutions don’t inforce themselves. Forty four state constitutions have similar provisions. The Second Amendment applies exclusively to the U.S. Congress, no state law has ever been held violative of the Second Amendment. Last year, in McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court held a Chicago area ordinance in violation of the “liberty” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Couort said that ordinance violated Illinoians Second Amendment right, not the amendment. Unfortunately, too many people refer to their right to bear arms as their Second Amendment right. It isn’t dependent on that amendment for its existence. Ican supply the High Court’s case-law, which states that if you would like.

    • Jeep

      James, have you ever heard of Prozac? While I do not usually advocate precription drug use, there are some exceptions I am willing to make. :)

      • hicusdicus

        James needs to imbibe in a little bit of Hawaiian smoke.

      • James

        No I haven’t. All I’ve done for the past 53 years is study constitutional, what are you on?

      • Vicki

        James you need to take a moment and reframe your thoughts. You have already stated that you understand that the right to keep and bear arms comes from the Creator and not from some piece of paper.

        As such the court rulings are not material nor is the presence of the statements in the US Constitution or that of several of the states.

        Now focusing only on Hawaii if there is such an amendment you neglected to provide a link to back up your assertion.

        If there is such an amendment then the entire point of the article is still valid. That the rights of Hawaiians is being violated by their government.

        Since part of the purpose of joining the union is the protections provided then the suit is valid just as the suit you mentioned above.

      • James

        Vicki, I agree. I was simply making the point that the Second Amendment is not the source of out right. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote “all Men…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Right…” That eventually earned him the title of the ‘Ultimate hypocrit,’ he owned over a hundred slaves.
        The Second Amendment restriction on Congress certainly didn’t stop it from passsing the Gun Control Act of 1968. Only citizens who were affected by that legislation could have defended themselves in court, by charging that Act violated the Second Amendment.

      • Vicki

        now just for grins let us look at US Constitutional law.

        “Alito’s majority decision relied on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, the provision most often cited by the Supreme Court when the high court has moved to enforce the protections in the Bill of Rights to the states.” (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/0628/Supreme-Court-Second-Amendment-rights-apply-across-US)

        As you already said the Court used the due process clause of the 14th amendment to assert that the entire individual right of the 2nd applies to state and local government as well as federal.

        It is also the one most used to apply any part of the Bill of Rights to the state.

        No biggie. It means that states that already have and enforce their own pet 2nd amendment have nothing to worry about. Hawaii and states (Calif for instance) must now stop messing around and follow the law of the land.

      • James

        Vicki, No I didn’t say that, I said in McDonald v. Chicago, the High Court held that a city ordinance was held to be in violation of the “liberty” of the 14th Amendment. That decision applies to other States only if they go to court over a similar law, and cite McDonald as precedent. When the Supreme Court makes such a decision, that doesn’t automatically cancel all State laws that are similar. In Roe v. Wade, States, on their own, started repealing their anti-abortion laws because they knew their laws would be challenged and they would lose. Gun laws are diffferent, States want to keep their power there.

  • 45caliber

    They need to catch up, at least, with the rest of the country. But I’m not surprised by their laws. They came into the union only about sixty or so years ago and the politicians were already trying to stifle gun ownership. So they had a chance to write the laws as they wished at that time.

    And I’d be willing to be that being a politician in Hawaii means that you have the right to carry there.

    • JUKEBOX

      If they had right to carry laws when the Japanese attacked in 1942, they might not have appeared so vulnerable.

      • 45caliber

        Hummm…

        Didn’t know Hawaii was attacked in 1942. Pearl Harbor was in 1940 and I never knew that it was attacked a second time.

      • Don

        I believe the date Pearl Harbor was attacked was Dec. 7th 1941 !!!

      • Palin12

        a date which will live in infamy.

  • DaveH

    The Socialist State of Hawaii has strict gun laws? Who woulda thunk it?

    • wandamurline

      They also have the POTUS’ “real” birthcertificate which a California lawyer had gotten permission from a federal judge to see…when she went to Hawaii on August 8th, Hawaiian Vital Statics refused to allow her to look at it (if they could find it). She has gone back to court and on September 11 or 12th, she will again ask the judge for a subpeona and warrant to see the birth certificate….she argues that since the inelibible president has released the form, it is no longer protected under the Information act. I

      • Barbara

        The state of Hawaii is so screwed up by their crooked politicians I would never go there for a vacation, nor would I support it. The people are so dumb they are being led on the leash by the democrats there who listen to Obama, their Hawaiian kahuna. As long as they are supporting Obama, I say, let them go back to living in their little grass shack with no electricity and grow their own food since just about everything is imported into the islands from the mainland. I just can’t tolerate stupidity.

      • hicusdicus

        But they sure grow some good smoke!

      • gypsy

        We all will need some of that smoke if the demos and dictator Obama mama is re elected.

      • gypsy

        Vote the dictators out of office.

      • Palin12

        Barb, be nice. I was born in Honolulu and I am conservative. If you take the free Navy shuttle to the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor I guarantee you’ll meet some more conservatives.

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