Hawaii Lawmakers Call on Congress to Repeal the Second Amendment

By: Robert Davis

Hawaii already has several bills aimed at restricting gun rights circulating in its legislature, but now lawmakers are cutting to chase.

"This week, a resolution was introduced in the Hawaii state Senate calling on the U.S. Congress to change or repeal the Second Amendment,” NRA-ILA reports. “Senate Concurrent Resolution 42, introduced by Senators Stanley Chang (D-9) and Karl Rhoads (D-13), would urge the U.S. Congress to adopt an amendment to eliminate the individual rights of citizens.”

The resolution states:

BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Thirtieth Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2019, the House of Representatives concurring, that the United States Congress is urged to propose and adopt a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution pursuant to article V of the United States Constitution to clarify the constitutional right to bear arms; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the United States Congress is requested to consider and discuss whether the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution should be repealed or amended to clarify that the right to bear arms is a collective, rather than individual, constitutional right; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Members of the Hawaii congressional delegation, and the Governor.

“Now, this is just a resolution and isn’t binding. Further, it was just proposed yesterday,” Bearing Arms reports. “Still, it’s very problematic. It’s a clear effort to repeal the Second Amendment.

Remember all the anti-gun activists who said they didn’t want to ban guns? Remember all the people who called the National Rifle Association and people like us paranoid because we opposed gun control and argued the endgame was to repeal the Second Amendment?

This proves all of those people wrong. Every damn one of them.

More Gun Control Bills, Ethics Complaints
Last month, the Hawaii Firearms Coalition is filing an ethics complaint after more than 700 pages of testimony went missing from the state’s Senate Public Safety Committee’s records, arguing the Senate violated their right to free speech.

“People were very upset,” Andrew Namiki Roberts, director of Hawaii Firearms Coalition, told Gunpowder Magazine. “We made a promise that their voices were going to be heard, and to be told after the fact that their testimony wouldn’t be included was a slap in the face.”

Roberts and his supporters went to the capitol to testify against four gun control bills. NRAILA.com reports on them:

SB 556 would “require notification to the Terrorist Screening Center of the FBI before a determination can be made to issue or deny a firearm permit,” “This legislation is unnecessary, as notification is already provided when utilizing the National Instant Check System (NICS), which Hawaii utilizes as part of the background check inquiry. Any determination based solely on inclusion on this list would violate a person’s right to due process.”

SB 600 would prohibit anyone under the age of 21 from registering a firearm, including military personnel who move their firearms to the island.

SB 621 would make it a misdemeanor if an individual failed to report a missing weapon within 24 hours, including in cases of robbery.

SB 1466 would establish a red flag gun confiscation law, meaning third parties could accuse someone of being unfit to possess a gun, and that person could have his or her gun(s) confiscated based on an accusation, not on a conviction.

“State legislators are supposed to hear testimony, but look around the country – many of them are acting like rulers and deciding what to do based on what they think is best, not what their constituents want,” Roberts said.

Roberts wore a body camera to confront Sen. Clarence Nishihara (D-Waipahu), chairman of the committee, about the missing testimony, and posted it on the Coalition’s website.

In the video, a clerk for Nishihara tells Roberts the committee was no longer using the direct testimony email address through which the Coalition told its members to submit their testimony. The clerk claims the information came directly from Nishihara.

Committee rules state that email is an acceptable way by which to submit testimony. The state website states, however, that the preferred method of communication is through the capitol website, so emails can be stored electronically.
According to Nishihara’s clerk, the committee email system was having problems filtering the testimony into the right folders. A lot of testimony was incorrectly moved into the “junk” folder. The committee has stopped checking that inbox because of the problems.

“This testimony is the voice of the people, and they must be given a chance to speak,” Roberts said.

Hawaii News Now reported the Senate has since added the missing testimony to the public record, though it is unclear how much testimony on other bills has been affected by this problem.

NRA-ILA reported that “the Hawaii state Senate Committee on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs passed three anti-gun bills out of committee,” and that S.B. 600, S.B. 621, and S.B. 1466 are headed for a vote on the Senate Floor.

Robert Davis is a general assignment reporter for Gunpowder Magazine. You can contact him with tips or comments at [email protected] or on Twitter @Davisonthebeat.