This is an email I received. I promptly emailed and encourage all of you to do the same.



House Bill 679, providing limited civil immunity from Hawaii's "absolute liability" firearms law for NRA Instructors while teaching must get a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee by next week, or it dies.  Senator Clayton Hee, Chair of Judiciary, is presently considering whether to schedule it.  The plaintiff attorneys are strongly lobbying him to let it die without a hearing.

Please send Sen. Hee an e-mail and follow up with a phone call to his office.  Ask him to "Please hear HB 679 and pass it."

senhee@capitol.hawaii.gov        586-7330

Respectfully,
Dr. Max Cooper

Sent

Done.

Got this at 5:38 AM today:

Dear Mr. G:

Thank you for your email regarding HB 679.  My office staff and I appreciate your request and are presently making every effort to hear as many proposals as we are able within the short time frame left in the legislature.  We will try our best to accomodate your request.

Sincerely,

Clayton Hee

Tom:
It looks like thats their standard form letter email to everyone who emails them.
I got one of those too.

Email sent! 

I hope this and other 2A legislation passes.  Thank you for keeping us updated!   

Tom:
It looks like thats their standard form letter email to everyone who emails them.
I got one of those too.

I figured the response was standardized.  What I found remarkable is that it was sent at 5:38 AM.

Same response.

I just received and email response that the Judiciary and Labor Committee will hear this legislation on Monday, 2 April at 10 am in conference room 016.

Sounds like progress! 

Alright ladies and gentlemen,

Here is the chance to flood the committee with support for this bill. Even if you are not an NRA instructor, please consider submitting testimony in support of this measure. First, any "chipping away" at Hawaii's restrictive laws will ultimately benefit the entire shooting community, and second, it will be good practice and get folks familiar with the process for subsequent efforts on other bills.

So, let's see how many pieces of testimony we can get for this. Remember, the "other side," the lobbist for the plaintiff's attorneys, has been lobbying Sen. Hee very hard. Initially, it was to get him NOT to hear the bill, but I am sure the volume of calls and e-mails he got pursuaded him to give it a hearing. Now, I am sure they are lobbying him to not pass it out, so we really need to flood the hearing with supportive testimony. I have included the link (below) to the website to submit testimony, so please use it and pass this message along to any shooter or supporter you know. Remember, you don't need to write up anything fancy, just put something down on paper (or keyboard...) and get it in. If you are a constituent of Sen. Hee's please mention that in your testimony as well. If any of the members of the committee are your Representatives, please consider writing or calling them separetely. ( link to members of the JUD committee: http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/committeepage.aspx?comm=JDL )

http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/submittestimony.aspx

PLease remember that testimony needs to be submitted at least 24 hours in advance of the hearing, so don't wait. Get it in now.

Thanks in advance for what I am sure will be an ton of testimony.
 

Testimony testified.   

Done.

Just read the changes from the originally submitted bill (sorry, did not have a time to do so prior...) and noted that the wording of the bill only provides the liability protection "...during the course of providing firearms training or safety courses or classes at a firing range or other firearms training facility to persons seeking to aquire a permit for the acquisition of a pistol or revolver in accordance with section 134-2(g)(4)....."

The problem, as I read it, is twofold. First, it would limit the applicabillity of this liability protection when the training was done on a range or "other firearms training facility..." Why is this important? Well, imagine an instructor that chooses to do the didactic portion of the class at his home, since this in one of the few places he (or she) could have their guns, and a student sneaks in a cartridge and subsequently loads that cartridge and fires it, injuring someone. Since the training was not in a "firearms training facility" that instructor may be excluded from the intended liability protection

Second, what if the instruction being provided is not for the purposes of obtaining a PTA, say NRA's Personal Protection in the Home? Again, since the purpose of the training is not to secure the PTA, the instructor runs the risk of not being shielded from liability.

The reason I bring this up is that if you have not yet submitted your testimony, may I suggest that you incorporate this concern into it?

Thanks!

send my testimony to the link provided

Testiffied

Went to the hearing....had about 30+ pieces of testimony. So, good job.....it looks like the bill will pass, but the committee had some problems with wording of the bill in terms of defining "firing range" and "other training facility" so they wanted additional information. And, as expected the plaintiff's attorney's lobbist was there saying there was a significant difference between the state "owning" guns and allowing the LEO's that "used" them in terms of "constructive possiion" and NRA instructors letting students use their guns during training.

This "difference" was, in part, due to a contentious discussion between "us" and a member of the House committee against the plaintiff's attorney, who said that a student who had "possession" of an instructor's gun assumed the liability if anything happened. That is not how we, nor Rep. Thieland (who was a practicing lawyer)  interpreted the language.

We'll wait to see what happens. But, in the meantime I wanted to thank everyone who provided testimony. That being said, we can still do better. We need to be able to flood committee hearing with hundreds of pieces of testimony....we're getting there, but we still have a ways to go.

10-4 on that!  I would like to see hundreds if not thousands of letters and emails when ever these bills come up.
There are thousands of gun owners on this island and in this state. We could very well effect change if only we could all stand together on these issues. 

I think it would help if someone would word a "prototype" letter for the rest of us unedjumakated shooters that struggle with how exactly to word a testimony letter.

I wrote a letter but honestly was at a loss for what to put in it.

I can almost guarantee there were at least a few more people who felt the same way.

I called everyone on the committie to support the bill. I hope they heard and it passes
Pastor Dennis

I think it would help if someone would word a "prototype" letter for the rest of us unedjumakated shooters that struggle with how exactly to word a testimony letter.

I wrote a letter but honestly was at a loss for what to put in it.

I can almost guarantee there were at least a few more people who felt the same way.

If you don't know what to say, that's ok.  Just click the "support"  (or "oppose," depending) button and then click "Submit."  It would surprise the hell put of me to find out that any of the legislators actually read the text.