Honolulu, Hawaii — Gun owners in Hawaii are getting a taste of legislative tyranny this week, after Governor David Ig signed a slew of new state laws.
Among the draconian new laws:
Bill SB600 created a ban on any gun owner younger than 21 bringing guns into the state.
This means that anybody under 21 years old will have to leave their guns at home if they decide to move to Hawaii.
Previously, the state law allowed anybody legally able to own a gun to bring it with them to Hawaii; it even allowed aliens to bring them to the state for the purpose of hunting and target shooting.
The other bill of note is SB1466, which is essentially a so-called “ERPO,” or Red Flag Gun Confiscation bill.
Like all Red Flag laws, this makes it easier to temporarily seize guns from gun owners without due process.
No charge, no trial, no jury, no conviction.
All it takes is a third party to report you for behavior they consider “possibly dangerous.”
Nearly anybody can petition the court for this, from a coworker who doesn’t like your politics, a liberal teacher who is paranoid, a doctor who thinks that anybody owning a gun is “possibly dangerous” or even a family member.
Hope you’ve been extra nice to your crazy Aunt Sharon!
Hawaii’s Red Flag law doesn’t require the gun owner being investigated even be present at their own hearing!
And if their gun rights are suspended (at a hearing they’re not even at!) then Hawaii’s gun owners lose their gun rights for a year.
The person’s whose rights are being violated can petition to get their gun rights back, but they have to prove why they are not a significant danger — whatever that means.
Additionally, the third party who brought the complaint can also petition to have your gun rights taken away for more than a year!
This law, like so many other Red Flag laws, completely destroys the concept of due process: where you have to be charged with a crime, tried, and convicted to lose your rights.
No, in Blue Hawaii, most of the residents likely don’t even care that this is happening to gun owners.
But as gun owners know, the moment they can take away our rights with the stroke of a pen, nobody else’s rights are safe, either!
And when the State has overstepped itself and taken rights away from everybody, there won’t be any gun owners left to call for help.