2020-02-11 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – February 11, 2020 person needs to have a firearms permit, or a firearms registration form. Basically, they pass a background check or already own a firearm, so, and you can’t loan it to anyone else. So that’s a change with that. SB 3053 – ban on any gun of 50 caliber: that one was deferred so probably won’t see it again but basically usually they mean 50 cal browning machine gun, which is a military round, but, they didn’t specify that so it could affect muskets – if you hunt with a musket – could affect that 500 Smith and Wesson revolver – that’s 50 caliber – that would be banned under this bill as written but fortunately that one is deferred. SB 3054 – that was heard last week – basically you have to notify he police department if you permanently remove firearms from the state, maybe you move out-of-state or you sell it to someone on the mainland, you have 5 days to report it to the police department so they can take it – change the registration that was amended – you still have to do it – but there’s no penalty involved. Before it used to be a petty misdemeanor – so still have to do it but no penalty involved. So those are the firearms bills that concern hunting and then also I have a list of some hunting bills, now just to let you know I’m not a hunter – I can’t shot Bambi, but, you know, I’ll eat Bambi, no problem, if you shoot it. But, that’s basically my experience. I did go bird hunting a couple times but it turned into a long hiking trip instead. So, these are some of the hunting bills that I found going through the bills for the year – there’s probably about three thousand of them – two or three thousand of ‘em. Let’s see HB 1748 and also 2188 – they’re the same bill – that was heard yesterday in the Senate – basically right now these are for some hunting offenses – basically like hunting endangered species, some of ‘em are pretty petty, hunting at night on private property, hunting on another person’s property without permission, shooting wild, killing wild birds, currently for their first offense there’s a $200.00 fine possible, misdemeanor, imprisonment, I think of not more than one year. And on your second offense they’ll confiscate your firearms, animal parts and products obtained through a violation – so this bill basically copied the same violations to your first offense – basically they added arms confiscation and compensation of animal parts and products. So I thought that might be unwarranted – some of these offenses can be done unintentionally or by accident and the first offense can serve as a warning so I don’t think the confiscation of firearms was warranted. The Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office actually called me. They said they \[unclear\] firearms confiscation by a mistake so their recommendation to the committee for yesterday’s hearing was to take it out and just – they were more concerned with like ivory trafficking and things like that – I guess they didn’t realize all the other things like killing wild birds and stuff like that. AA: Abraham – District 5. So they going take another look into that bill before they even think about going anymore forward when you talked to them? TY: Yeah, they amended the bill to take out the confiscation of firearms for the first offense and it passed the Water & Land Senate Committee and it should be going for a vote and going to the Judiciary next. 10