Many Hawaii gun owners are strange. They like and use firearms, but at the same time, they agree with infringement. Hypocrisy is ingrained in Hawaii residents from a young age. That is why it is soooo difficult.
Chalk that up to the fact that Hawaii was not part of the "birth" of the US. The islands became a state long after the oppressive rule of King George III, The US Revolutionary War, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, The US Civil War, The Spanish-American War, the expansion West from the Eastern Seaboard to California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, and so forth.
Guns have been an essential part of American History. If you didn't own a gun, you probably couldn't protect yourself and your family from Native-American Indian attacks, wild predatory animals, or outlaws. You had a harder time protecting your crops from scavenging animals. You had a harder time taking game to feed yourself and others. It's a tool that many people needed just to survive. Then there's the large-scale criminal element: organized crime (mob), national gangs, and rampant lawlessness in big cities over the last century+.
How many locals here had to contend with bears, bobcats, mountain lions, wolves, etc.? Plus, rabies is a real threat when an ordinarily nonthreatening mammal contracts it.
The "gun culture" of the US was developing long before Hawaii was a territory. In addition, much of the current population of Hawaii came from other Pacific cultures that also didn't have the gun-centric culture of the US.
When it comes to Hawaii and guns, ideas are formed based on what Hawaii has -- and what Hawaii hasn't -- had to live through. Hawaiian history is much different than US history. I see that as the biggest divide when it comes to the gun culture and gun control laws here.