Cornflake cookies or a semiautomatic rifle?
A neighborhood mom-and-pop shop where kids flock after school for fresh cookies and shave ice has an unusual sign in its window: “Danger Close Tactical: Firearms and Ammo.”
The choice is yours when you step into KD Cafe in Pauoa Valley. Stop at the counter for a sweet treat. Or if you’re over 21, you can step into a tiny adjoining room that houses the gun dealership known as Danger Close Tactical.
“My hours are usually after any of the children are here,” said Dwayne Lim, a National Guard technician and marksman who sees customers after 4 p.m. on weekdays in the space carved from his wife’s cafe. “The kids are always curious, but the door is locked.”
On the other side of the Pali, customers looking for a teeth-cleaning or perhaps a pistol might try the squat brick building in Kailua that houses the Dr. KB Chun & Sons dental practice. The one-story facility doubles as the site of the federal firearms dealership of dentist Mark Chun.
Despite their unconventional settings, both gun businesses are perfectly legal, licensed by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and approved by local authorities. They operate on commercially zoned property with their landlords’ permission.
Licenses on decline
Meanwhile, home-based gun dealers are gradually vanishing on Oahu. The Honolulu City Council banned the sale of guns and ammunition from homes in 1994, but people already in the business were grandfathered in. Stricter licensing requirements and enforcement have dramatically reduced the prevalence of gun dealers across the country in recent decades.
The number of gun dealers with “type one” federal firearms licenses plummeted to 56,181 in 2015 from 158,240 in 1995. The drop was even steeper in Hawaii, which had 820 gun dealers with that basic license in 1994 and just 118 at last count in August, almost all of them with storefronts. Gun manufacturers have a different type of license.
A new study by the Violence Policy Center identified 26 possible “kitchen-table dealers” on Oahu still operating in what seemed to be residential settings as of May. The center, based in Washington, D.C., called on local authorities to “carefully review Federal Firearms License holders in the City and County of Honolulu to assess compliance.”
Josh Sugarmann, the nonprofit’s executive director, noted that having a federal gun dealer’s license allows the holder to buy guns in unlimited quantities at wholesale prices.
“It is essential that communities know who has these licenses, how they are using them, and whether they are meeting all local, state and federal standards,” he said.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser winnowed the list of “kitchen-table dealers” to those actually on residential-zoned property as of August, the most recent data, and found a total of 17 on Oahu. It then obtained the initial license date from the ATF for each dealer to see if they had been grandfathered in.
All had been operating since before the prohibition on home gun sales on Oahu, except two, who turned out to be gunsmiths, an allowable home occupation in Honolulu. Neither gunsmith has sold guns, according to Ginger Colbrun, ATF spokeswoman.
Federal law places no restrictions on the sale of firearms from residences, but it does require an applicant to have a permanent place of business and abide by state and local laws, she said.
In Hawaii, the rules vary by county. On Kauai, home-based gun sales are allowed. In Honolulu, dealers must obtain a business license as well as zoning approval from the county that they are on commercial property.
Even a storage unit is an acceptable business address. Archie Ahuna, of Ahuna’s Special Effects, brings in explosives and weapons for use in movies and TV productions. His business is based at a former military bunker in Waikele now used for commercial storage.
“We use blanks,” he said. “They don’t fire real ammunition. I don’t sell weapons to anybody.”
The number of home-based gun shops keeps dropping. Last month, longtime dealer Al Mongeon of Kailua gave up his business, Ready on the Right, after a couple of health scares.
“I decided to let it go after 30 years and 8,000 entries in the bound book,” he said, referring to acquisition and disposition records. “Now I might get to go to the shooting range more than twice a year.”
Mongeon specialized in internet transfers of firearms, serving as the authorized local dealer to receive weapons ordered by Hawaii customers. His departure from the business leaves just 16 residential firearms dealers in Honolulu.
Longtime gunsmith and dealer Ed Masaki, 83, is not sure how long he’ll keep up his dealership at his home near Waialae.
“I’m getting too old for this,” said Masaki, who is known for developing a pistol dubbed the “dragon gun.”
Another dealer, Darryl Y.C. Choy, a District Court judge until his retirement in August, says he does virtually no business these days from his Makiki Heights home, though he’s had a firearms dealer’s license for more than 30 years.
“We started off as a hunting club,” Choy said, with members taking trips to neighbor islands to shoot game. “We’re not really an active FFL (Federal Firearms Licensee) … I am trying to think back as to when anybody in our club last bought a gun.”
“I probably confiscated a lot more guns than we ever sold,” he added with a laugh as he looked back on his career as a judge.
1 million guns owned
While the number of dealers has shrunk, there are nearly as many guns as people living in Hawaii. There were an estimated 1 million privately owned firearms in the state in the late 1990s, according to the Department of the Attorney General. More guns have come into the state since then, although the outflow is impossible to track.
Annual gun registrations in Hawaii surged to a peak of 60,757 in 2013 from 25,996 in 2008, before dropping to 46,813 last year, according to a 2015 annual report by the department. About half of the firearms were imported to the state, and half are transferred within it. Anyone in Hawaii who wants to buy a gun has to get a permit from the county chief of police and submit to a background check.
In Pauoa, Lim started his business in December 2012, when gun sales were soaring. He sees it as a way to support his fellow citizens’ right to own guns and a source of income for him when he retires from the National Guard.
He gets rave online reviews from customers for his friendliness, prices and willingness to take time to educate buyers.
Plus, as one reviewer wrote, “This is the only gun shop I know that smells like cookies and the sweet aroma of tasty baked goods.”
