The multi-island paradise of Hawaii is rapidly becoming an Orwellian political dystopia.
On July 11, Chris Eger of Guns.Com reported that (no shock) the Democratic Governor of the state, David Ige, signed into effect two new anti-gun statutes that not only infringe on the right to keep and bear arms but also stand as insults to logic and common sense.
The first statute, entitled SB600, prohibits anyone under 21 years of age from entering the political boundaries of the state while in possession of a firearm.
Some might call this “discriminatory” of people under 21. But that’s a bit of a misnomer. It uses the process of discrimination – distinguishing between two or more things – to unduly punish people under 21. And it stands as a giant middle-finger-salute to the Second Amendment as well as the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unwarranted searches and seizures. It is an insult to the protection of due process that is explicitly mandated in the Fifth Amendment. It breaches the prohibition against the taking pf private property without “just compensation” that is supposedly insured by the same Amendment. It’s a breach of the Sixth Amendment’s requirement for a timely trial by jury, and it is a breach of the Eight Amendment’s prohibition against excessive fines or undue punishments.
SB600 also stands on volcanic legal grounds when it comes to Article Four, Section One, of the U.S. Constitution, which assures that “full faith and credit” will be afforded by all states any legal standing from any other state. Thus, if a person in one state has a “license” to own a gun, that legal document is supposed to be recognized and valid in all. (This is why you can rent a car in any state if you have a driver’s license from one of the fifty.)
As Todd Yukutake, of the Hawaii Firearms Coalition said of SB600:
A person under the age of 21 can join the military and die for their country, drive a car which can be far more dangerous than a firearm and is not a constitutional right, and be an adult making life decisions… However, those supporting this bill do not believe these good people deserve the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
And Mr. Yukutake is spot on when it comes to the practical ridiculousness of statutes to supposedly “ban” people under 21 from bringing firearms into Hawaii. Regardless of the primary foundation of this – the right to self-defense that is not supposed to be infringed by the state – the fact is far more people die in auto accidents each year. In 2017, the year with the most complete studies thus far conducted, 53 vehicle occupants and five pedestrians were killed in Hawaii auto accidents, and that doesn’t include the 21 killed due to moped and scooter crashes and the four killed in bicycle accidents. That’s 83 total, compared to 39 firearms deaths that year in the state, most of them suicide, in a population of 1.63 million. In fact, for 2017, Hawaii ranked second among all U.S. states for traffic fatalities, and the numbers keep rising.
Beyond that seeming blackhole of illogic when it comes to targeting 21-year-olds and guns, there is the perpetually obvious fact that statutes to “stop” criminally-minded people from acquiring firearms do not work. People who want to engage in criminal activity are already intent on breaking laws, which is why prohibition fails.
Again, all those practical considerations are important. But they are secondary compared to the fact that human beings have an inherent right to self-defense, otherwise, they have no right to life.
Which brings us to the second statute, SB1466, the Hawaiian version of the “Red Flag” “Protective Order” statutes that have been passed by collectivists in seventeen states, and proposed in six.
As Eger notes, in Hawaii the Newspeak-framed “Protective Order” (really an open door for the state to threaten and attack people’s rights):
…would allow for co-workers, educators, medical professionals or family members of an individual thought to be at risk of hurting themselves (sic) or others to ask a family court in the state for a GVPO. If granted in a hearing that doesn’t require the subject of the order to be present, the individual would have their gun rights suspended for a year.
So, as I noted in a piece a year ago when dissecting the utterly pernicious Massachusetts “Red Flag” statute, this Hawaii law allows for double theft. The state, which only operates by tax thievery, can now, literally, steal a firearm when the owner has done nothing to breach any laws against anyone else’s person or property.
As with SB600, SB1466 contravenes the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unwarranted searches and seizures for actual crimes, it breaches the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, it violates the prohibition of “takings” without “just compensation”, it breaches the Sixth Amendment’s requirement for a due process trial by jury, and it violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against undue punishment.
It is essential to stress one key point. These are not actions that the state is allowing itself to take upon the determination that a suspect has engaged in criminal threatening, in the overt statement of the intent to do physical harm to a person or a thing. And even if criminal threatening were to be suspected, proper adjudication would be needed before any agent of the state could punish the defendant.
These are actions the state will take without trial, without even allowing the accused to speak for himself or herself. These are actions that are so monumentally offensive to anyone who understands Natural Rights and British Common Law as to make him or her wonder how Hawaii became so inimical to those fundamental principles.
According to many of the most influential Founders, government is supposedly established by people in order to stop folks from threatening each other’s property and lives.
But, government, especially that of Hawaii and other states that threaten the very right to self-defense, is actually the greatest and most powerful threat to our lives and property. In fact, it can only exist by claiming it can take as much of our monetary property as it wants, with which it will continue to threaten us to give it more.
By seeing statutes such as these in Hawaii, perhaps more people will recognize the threat government is, and always will be, to our inherent rights.
That’s probably the only positive one can get out of these two monstrous Hawaiian Democratic creations.