“The state of Hawaii did not issue any gun-carry permits to private citizens in 2016, the Washington Free Beacon reports. “Documents submitted by county police to the state’s Department of the Attorney General show that every application by a private citizen for a concealed-carry permit was denied in 2016. That makes Hawaii the only state in the country not to issue even a single concealed-carry permit last year.”
An unbroken record stretching back to 2000 — despite the fact that Hawaiian [non carry] gun permit applications rose by 298 percent between 2000 and 2014. And if you think the Aloha State is the only state where gun rights go to die . . .
“All other states have issued permits,” said Dr. John Lott Jr. of the Crime Prevention Research Center. “The next lowest state is New Jersey with about 1,200 permits, but half of those are issued to judges and retired police officers. Even D.C. last year had [just] 74 permits for civilians being able to carry.”
Clearly, it’s high time the Supreme Court struck down “may issue” permitting systems in states like Hawaii, New Jersey and Rhode Island. Or declare all firearms permitting processes an infringement on Americans’ natural, civil or Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Hey, I can dream can’t I?
Meanwhile — wouldn’t you know it? — Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun agit-propagandists are in love. Here’s a taste of The Trace’s article Forget Australia’s Gun Laws. American Reform Advocates Have Their Own Island to Study:
[Hawaii’s 25 percent gun ownership rate] point to a conundrum. Research shows that higher rates of gun ownership lead to higher rates of violent crime. How has the Aloha State avoided the correlation?
The answer begins with one way in which Hawaii differs from many of its continental cohorts: As the number of guns in the state has increased, Hawaii’s legislators have enacted some of the strictest gun safety measures in the country.
State law, for starters, requires a universal background check for all firearm sales. Citizens are required to obtain a permit and sit through a two-week waiting period before making a purchase, and they must register any firearm they buy. Registration itself is a multi-step process that can lead prospective gun owners on as many as five separate trips to either a police station or gun retailer.
Permits for concealed-carry, meanwhile, are issued at the discretion of the state’s county police chiefs, who set a high bar (a recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals looks poised to bulldoze that hurdle, though the state’s lawyers are fighting the ruling). In short: Background checks, waiting periods, elaborate registration guidelines, and strict limits on concealed-carry permits combine to seriously vet prospective gun owners, and limit impulse and illegal purchases.
A high bar for concealed carry? Need I remind Trace scribe Kevin Mahnken that when it comes to concealed carry permits Hawaii issues exactly none?
Guess so. I’m also thinking that Mr. Mahnken is cherry-picking variables — draconian, unconstitutional gun control laws all — to portray Hawaii as the Promised Land.
Manhken then makes the usual argument that all of America would be the same pastime paradise if only gun control was federal, somehow preventing illegal interstate gun traffic. Like this:
[Duke sociology professor Philip J.] Cook went on to suggest [that] Hawaii offers a kind of case study in what federal gun regulations might look like — a country in which firearms would be more difficult to acquire and carry in public, much harder to procure illegally, but still plentifully owned by law abiding citizens.
“If we start talking about a national strategy,” he says “that eliminates the ‘Chicago-Gary problem’”—i.e., the network of criminal actors funneling illegal guns into Chicago from nearby Gary, Indiana. “At the very least, it would cut into some of the flows we’re seeing right now, just as the Brady Act cut down on some interstate trafficking. Probably, it would tell us something about the potential effectiveness of national regulation as opposed to states going it alone, where they’re being undercut by their lax neighbors.”
Setting aside the Second Amendment, anyone who thinks that the federal gun control would stem the tide of “gun violence” in the continental U.S.’s urban centers should be exiled to an island in the Pacific. For their own safety.