I concur with eyeeatingfish that emailing, faxing, sending letters, calling and meeting in person with legislators that oppose our being able to legally exercise our rights appears to be useless (not one single "citizen" in the state is legally "allowed" to carry, only four licenses issued in the past 16 years, and the most recent one of those, in 2013 in Kauai was issued for a term of NINE DAYS (it's been three weeks so far since the police chief told me he would get back to me about what statute "allowed" him to issue a license for any term other than the "one year" prescribed by HRS 134-9. You'd think he'd know of the top of his head the source of his authority.
But I guess that's too much to expect.)
One option (as Q states above) is to look to another branch of government, the court system, to validate and enforce our rights in the face of another branch of government trampling on them. I think it's pretty clear now that both the state court system and the federal court system, including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, will not support our right to bear arms outside the home. Peruta/Richards/Baker was an anomalous result at the three judge panel level due to a statistically highly unlikely fluke wherein two of the three judges randomly selected happened to support our rights. The entire Circuit membership is nearly 3/4 appointees selected by presidents for their "liberal" views. SCOTUS hasn't taken a Second Amendment case since 2010, and of several cases where cert was denied only Scalia and/or Thomas wrote dissents. Only four votes are required to grant cert, so it appears that Kennedy, and likely even Roberts, are opposed to citizens being armed in public. Now that Scalia is gone, that leaves only Thomas (like Scalia was, also in rather poor health) and Alito as likely supporters of our rights. I am not hopeful about the judicial branch of government supporting our rights in Hawaii.
How did women obtain the "right" to vote? How did "black people" obtain the rights to vote, attend schools and colleges that had banned them, sit where they wanted on buses, etc. etc. etc.? How did members of the LGBT community manage to convince lawmakers and courts to "grant" them the ability to marry and have other legal rights they had been denied in the face of overwhelming opposition from the general population?
Until we have enough people willing to put themselves "on the line" and face repeated arrest in mass demonstrations that disrupt "business as usual" for government agencies, it's unlikely that any other strategy (that I can think of) will result in any change. Our problems with this strategy are that: 1. We don't have nearly enough people willing to put their lives on hold for years while subject to the harsh punishments and harassment by the government that would result from disruptive demonstrations. 2. As a total group, we are much fewer in number than any of the previously cited groups: women are 50% of th total population, "blacks" are 13%, and LGBT are maybe 2-5%. I'd imagine that CCW advocates who would exercise their right in Hawaii is around 1-3%. I also suspect that there are relatively few "nonmembers" who sympathize with us enough to participate in demonstrations as was the case with the other groups. 3. We are an extremely small minority who reside in a few repressive states (Hawaii, New Jersey, Maryland, some counties of California, etc.), while the vast majority of citizens of the Untied States already have the right and exercise it, unlike the other cases. 4. OFWGs are not nearly as "sympathetic" as the other groups. And we have no images of being attacked by police dogs, billy clubs, fire hoses, etc. Thus, I must conclude that even the only strategy that has proven to work in other cases of rights denial will not work for us.
So, I give up. They win.
No, not really. It's a civics lesson, if nothing else. I concur with RSN172 that the most likely remedy could come from some kind of federal legislation requiring all states to (at least) recognize and honor reciprocity for all other states CCW licenses. That can only happen if the U.S. House and Senate, and the presidency are controlled by individuals sympathetic to our cause and willing to legislate it. So we're dependent on politicians. Again. I don't like that. But I'm going to vote anyway.