*Edited to save myself from further embarrassment*It was brought to my attention that HB1980 that turns chicken fighting into a felony has some rather disturbing language that criminalizes hunting.
What had people concerned was SECTION 3. Section 711-1109 because it seems to impose all sorts of crazy leash laws and make it illegal to kill anything that's not a pest or insect.
Something wasn't right though. Usually they use
underscores and
strikethroughs and this paragraph didn't seem to have anything.
Was this some New World Order conspiracy to force us to eat ze bugs?
Well, not exactly...
After looking up the existing statues to see if there was an exemption on hunting I noticed that the HRS had the exact same language that everyone is getting worked up about.
Turns out in HB1980 the word "cock" was crossed out on a list of fighting animals since the new language being introduced would apply specifically to game birds.
It's a very small change that's easy to miss...because I missed it too!
Apparently lots of people who are coming to capitol.gov for the first time because obviously chicken fighting is huge here and literally thousands of people are about to become overnight felons. The lack of experience with legislative issues resulted in rumors circulating around the coconut wireless.
Unfortunately I have no such excuse, but it is encouraging that so many Ainokeas are waking up. There's huge political potential if we can figure out how to activate them. Those kinds of numbers would make a big difference this November.
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HB&billnumber=1980&year=2024