As a young journalist, I saw the moment that may have started the escalation of the epidemic of gun violence that has plagued the United States. 

It was 1995 and a Texas Senate committee was hearing testimony from a survivor of a mass shooting at a cafeteria. The survivor, Suzanna Hupp, told the committee how the gunman interrupted the lunch she was having with her parents. When the shooting started she reached into her purse and prepared to return fire. 

However, when she went to grab her handgun, it wasn’t in her purse. It was in her car, because Texas state laws prevented her from bringing her weapon into the cafeteria. 

During her testimony, Hupp said that it was like watching fish being shot in a barrel. At one point she made her hand into the shape of a gun and pointed it at the legislators. It was a very effective piece of political theater and the country has suffered ever since. 

I told this story to my friend, Dominic Erdozain, the author of the recently published “One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Democracy.” It was part of a larger conversation we had as he was starting work on the book about the history of firearms in America. 

We were hiking near his parents’ home in England with our children. We were taking advantage of the UK’s “right to roam” and crossing through bucolic pastureland. I mentioned to him that this would have never happened in Texas. We would’ve been risking getting shot for trespassing.

Our kids bounced from tussock to tussock and stayed ahead of a herd of cows that were interested in following us across a field. It was a delightful hike through land that was private but still available for us to traverse.  

Here in the United States, what Texas started 30 years ago has continued with Tennessee just approving legislation that permits teachers to arm themselves in the classroom. This is where progress has brought us.

Firearms Must Still Be Registered With Authorities

Thankfully, we live in Hawaii, a place that remains a staunch outlier when it comes to gun laws, and more importantly, gun culture.

Erdozain cited Hawaii’s outlier status in a recent essay. Because of the Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Hawaii has had to reshape its gun laws to reflect the decision.

“The legal battle is lost for a long time to come, but could Hawaii be a place where people basically continue to say no to guns?” Erdozain wondered. 

It has been two years since Bruen and a considerable effort has been made to keep Hawaii’s gun culture closer to pre-2022 than drifting closer to a 2024 Texas-style gun culture where there are essentially no restrictions when it comes to firearms.

“The spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities.”

Hawaii Supreme Court

Many, including me, feared that Bruen would change Hawaii’s gun culture for the worse. As a few have previously commented, because of our restrictive gun laws, beefs in Hawaii are settled by fists and not guns. 

It seems our outlier status is holding. There hasn’t been a significant documented increase in firearms in Hawaii since the Bruen ruling. 

Last week, the Hawaii Attorney General’s office released its 24th annual report on firearm registrations. As someone who spent many years living in gun bastions like Texas and Georgia, I find this document remarkable. 

Its remarkableness is primarily based on its existence. No other state has this kind of data because no other state requires registering all firearms with local law enforcement. 

Before the Bruen ruling, Hawaii had already seen an incredible increase in guns. When the AG started charting the annual registration numbers in 2000 there were 13,617 registered firearms. Significant leaps in registrations correlate to election years where Democrats win the White House. 

Last year, 51,807 firearms were registered. This was a slight decrease from the year before. The AG estimated that there are more than 2 million firearms in Hawaii. The people who register their firearms are law-abiding and, presumably, responsible gun owners.

There is seemingly no correlation between violent crime in Hawaii and firearm registrations. In 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hawaii had 71 gun deaths (second lowest behind Rhode Island). Texas had 4,613.

Law Of The Splintered Paddle Vs. 2nd Amendment

The most prominent pushback against a change in our gun culture came in the State of Hawaii v. Wilson case. The state Supreme Court issued a very colorful opinion written by Justice Todd Eddins that upheld a challenge to Hawaii’s firearm registration requirements.

The case stemmed from a trespassing incident at a Maui zipline property in 2017. In the wake of the Bruen ruling, motions to reconsider the case were filed. The justices in Hawaii ruled that the Bruen case did not prevent Hawaii from imposing its own gun requirements and said that Hawaii’s constitution contained a significant element that underpinned that justification.

The February ruling stated: “The spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities. The history of the Hawaiian Islands does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others.”

The opinion cited Kamehameha I’s “Law of the Splintered Paddle” as “the living symbol of the State’s concern for public safety.” Eddins wrote that “a free-wheeling right to carry guns in public degrades other constitutional rights.”

Can other communities struggling for answers and examples turn to Hawaii? It was not long ago that they turned to Hawaii (along with Massachusetts) for examples of how to implement programs that were the predecessors of the Affordable Care Act. 

Hawaii needs to fight to keep its outlier status and keep the gun culture killing Americans at bay.