My emails were sent April 1, 26 and 27.
Were they even counted (like Hawaii CCW applications) ?
Not as testimony before a committee. Below is the schedule of the hearings and the testimony dates. The only meeting after your April 1 date was a conference committee that did not take testimony. Perhaps you wrote personal emails to individual legislators, but you didn't submit any testimony on those dates. It doesn't really matter anyway, they ignored it whatever it's "official" status. I remember writing in a thread about the results of a testimony count I did on some other bill this last session, and it was something like 106 to 12 for our side, and the bill passed (against us) either unanimously or close to unanimously. The only thing that will change anything here is big/"huge"/"big league" money to 1. litigate lots of lawsuits with top level attorneys, or 2. "Buy" legislative positions by outspending the gun grabbers by many times for many consecutive elections. Another possibility is that the Trump administration manages to pass some measures that would impose serious financial negatives on Hawaii unless they respect our rights to keep and bear arms. The "convert the populous to our view" via various outreach and educational efforts, which I believe won't work, would take at least 30 to 50 years even if such efforts did work... unless, again, some big league money was made consistently available for the effort.
While I believe that it really "makes no difference" if I submit testimony, write and call legislators, and file UIPA official requests for information that the various police departments and Attorney General don't want revealed to the public, I do it anyway, just in the spirit of "we know what you are doing". As they basically ignore my UIPA requests, even after the OIP attorney sends them notice that they must at least respond to the official requests, the only remaining option is to file lawsuits, and I have neither the legal expertise to file
pro se, nor the funds to even think about hiring an attorney. Thus they, with their deep pockets, use our tax money to fight any efforts by us to have them reveal publicly how they reach the conclusions and policy decisions they do (such as "Some guy wants to know the statutory justification for us issuing a CCW license for nine days when the statute clearly says "the term of the license shall be one year."). I rather suspect that behind closed doors and among friends they laugh at us. Sort of like "Ah, isn't that cute! They think they can make US reveal how we do things! What a bunch of naive morons! We're the COPS for chrissakes!".
Testimony
SB2954_TESTIMONY_PSM_02-11-16
SB2954_TESTIMONY_PSM_02-11-16_LATE
SB2954_SD1_TESTIMONY_JDL_03-01-16
SB2954_SD1_TESTIMONY_JDL_03-01-16_LATE
SB2954_SD2_TESTIMONY_JUD_03-18-16_
Hearing Notices
Comm Room Date/Time
PSM CR229 2/11/2016 1:15 PM
JDL 016 3/01/2016 9:05 AM
JUD 325 3/18/2016 2:00 PM
CONF 312 4/20/2016 9:00 AM
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=SB&billnumber=2954&year=2016