Hawaii lawmakers consider ban on lending of guns

State lawmakers said Tuesday that they were considering changes to Hawaii gun laws this session even before Sunday’s shooting deaths of two Honolulu police officers at a Diamond Head home presumably at the hands of a man who had no permit to own any guns.

Among the measures being considered in both the House and Senate are ones aimed at what lawmakers in both houses consider a loophole in gun regulations that involves the lending of firearms to another person.

“One of the loopholes that we’re finding is you may not necessarily be able to own one (a gun), but you can borrow one legally without having permitting in some cases,” said Rep. Chris Lee, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “So that’s one of the bills this year that we’re looking at to try and sort out who is responsible and what checks are in place in situations like that.”

House Bill 1600 says the current law allows certain firearms to be lent to adults for use within the state for up to 15 days without a permit and for use outside the state for up to 75 days, “thereby allowing the lending of firearms to persons who are not subject to a background check and other firearm permit requirements.”

Senate Judiciary Chairman Karl Rhoads said he is introducing a similar measure in the Senate but that his version would include an exception allowing a hunter to lend firearms to another person with a firearm license for up to 12 hours.

Honolulu police suspect that it was Jerry “Jarna” Hanel who shot and killed officers Tiffany Enriquez and Kaulike Kalama at 3015 Hibiscus Drive even though Hanel did not have any permits allowing him to own guns.

Janice Morrow, who was staying in a separate part of the house as a guest of property owner Lois Cain and was away when Sunday’s violence erupted, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Tuesday that Cain kept a storage locker filled with guns under her bed upstairs in the house. The guns belonged to Cain’s late husband, Raymond Cain, who died more than 10 years ago, Morrow said.

Both Hanel and Lois Cain are missing. Police confirmed Tuesday that two sets of remains were found in the rubble of the burned-out house, but they have not yet identified those remains.

Kainoa Kaku, vice president of the Hawaii Rifle Association, said, “I don’t know how any law would stop a crazy person from stealing a gun from someone else, which is what it sounds like had happened. I don’t know what else they would introduce that would have any effect or prevent what happened Sunday.”

The rifle association opposes additional regulations of firearms, “and we want to see a whole bunch of stuff repealed, including the difficult permitting process that’s currently on the books,” Kaku said.

Meanwhile, Lee said he also wants to see whether Hawaii can replicate a Chicago program that created a center to trace the history of stolen firearms. “They were able to identify clear channels where a lot of these firearms were actually being trafficked,” Lee said.

Even federally licensed firearms dealers “were actually selling things under the table or out their back door,” Lee said. “Here in Hawaii we don’t have a comprehensive look yet at what our data shows that we already have. So that’s something we want to take a look at to figure out how we can comprehensively identify the weaknesses and shortfalls and ultimately identify the ways our black market here in the state is allowing firearms to get into the wrong hands.”

Lawmakers last year passed a “red flag” law that allows courts to temporarily take guns away from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others.

Current leaders of the Hawaii chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America could not be reached for comment Tuesday. In an email Sunday, group local representative Carolyn Pearl said, “We shouldn’t have to live in fear of gun violence, whether it’s in our community, our schools or our workplaces. Even in a state with strong gun laws, there’s still more we can do to protect our families.”

Bennett Cale, former Hawaii leader of the group, said what’s key is that proper gun ownership education be done, including how to store guns. The group does not oppose ownership of guns, but supports safe and responsible ownership, he said.

Rhoads said there are no easy ways to prevent gun violence and that there is nothing that can halt it altogether. “All you can do is sort of stack the odds in favor of things not happening,” he said. “There’s always going to be some people who just ignore everything and do whatever it is they’re doing. And that’s not just true of guns; it’s true of everything.”