2017-01-17 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – January 17, 2017 VII. DISCUSSION The Hawai’i County Game Management Commission is exploring the necessity, feasibility, requirements, and opportunities for a county built and operated shooting facility. In our initial probe into this effort: a. Richard Hoeflinger, Past President and Director of On-Target in the need for a shooting facility. RH: OK. I’ll try to give you just a few minutes of background. My journey began fifteen years ago. I was involved with the state ten years ago with the Puuwaawaa ahupuaa Advisory Council. Our job as charter members was to do all the land plan for the public lands at Puuwaawaa. Miles Nakahara, who is retired from DLNR and I worked very hard to make sure that one of the objectives of the land management plan was to make sure there was going to be a shooting range as part of it – that is in the land plans. As far as I’ve been able to determine that’s probably the first time that I’ve ever seen it put down on a piece of paper but that was the start of the journey that I went on over this past fifteen years. In 2004, we formed a citizens’ working group – people from the business community and from various shooting clubs. These people that would have an interest in shooting and shooting sports and we took it upon ourselves the job of laying out – if we had a comprehensive shooting facility – what would it look like – what would we need to satisfy all the needs of the people on this island. From that, we laid it out and we determined that we needed. We need a comprehensive facility – do everything, everybody wanted – about one square mile of real estate and that’s how this all started, at least started for me. In 2010 that working group was incorporated as a 501 c 3 non-profit which it remains today – the charter of the group is to promote safe shooting sports in Hawaii. To address the issue that Mr. Lodge asked me to talk about tonight, which is a Hawaii Island shooting range – why is it needed. Here’s some facts – over a quarter million fire arms are registered in Hawaii County. That’s 1.3 guns for each resident. An average of 6,000 additional firearms are acquired by Hawaii County residents every year. Target shooting is the fastest growing participative sport in America – more people shoot targets than play soccer, baseball or ski. And target shooting is a recognized Olympic Sport. Ninety percent of the firearms legally owned by Hawaii County residents are rifles and pistols – ten percent are shot guns. Rifle and pistol shooting is prohibited on virtually all public lands, um, that’s Chapter 104 in the Hawaii Administrative Rules for Forest Reserves. A hunting license is not a permit for target shooting. Many of the popular firearms are prohibited for hunting. There’s a couple of them: 22, 9mm, a 45 – are not to be used. There’s other restrictions – 3