Below is a sample of media coverage that features HIFICO, its members, and its work.
Andrew Namiki Roberts, director of the Hawaii Firearms Coalition, admonished the department for taking six months to hold a hearing on changes required by a state law that was signed by the governor last summer.
“Thank you for having this meeting, at last. The Police Department had six months to do this. … You guys are doing it now, implementing the rules already. … We’re already seeing these rules put into effect,” said Roberts, addressing the panel Tuesday morning.
His biggest concern is the waivers of the HIPAA allowing police five years of access to mental health records.
“That’s unacceptable. There is a lot of discretion being implied in the rules with regards to how the chief looks at people’s backgrounds. We’re treating permits to acquire differently to how we are treating carrying firearms. The Constitution says the right to keep and bear arms. It’s not the right to keep arms if you do one thing and the right to bear arms if you do another.”
Namiki Roberts isn’t happy that the rules suggest police will consider what a gun owner might do, not what they have done, when deciding whether they may lawfully carry.
Gun sales have been blocked for much of December in Hawaii’s largest city.
That’s what the Hawaii Firearms Coalition, a local gun-rights group, claimed in a statement on Wednesday. It said the Honolulu Police Department (HPD) has advised gun purchase or carry permit applicants they won’t process them without a currently-unattainable training certification. And it’s unclear when those permits might become available again.