Put gun owners on FBI’s database
With the heightened awareness of gun violence locally and nationally, it would be a wise move — albeit unprecedented — to mandate Hawaii gun owners be entered into an FBI database that would alert law enforcement of any arrests in other jurisdictions.
Senate and House bills working their way through the state Legislature would establish “continuous background checks” rather than just the initial check when a firearm is registered. If passed into law, Hawaii would likely become the first state to register its gun owners through the FBI’s “Rap Back” database.
It’s unsettling that the only way local police know if gun owners have been arrested in another jurisdiction is if they come back to register another firearm. State law prohibits firearm ownership if someone has been charged or convicted of a felony, a crime of violence or the illegal sale of drugs.
Last year, 22 gun owners who attempted to register additional weapons here were deemed ineligible because of criminal records while eight others were disqualified because of their involvement in domestic violence cases. In 2014, 18 with criminal records were ineligible and two were disqualified due to domestic violence.
“The fact that we only come across them accidentally is kind of scary,” Honolulu Police Maj. Richard Robinson told the Star-Advertiser. “How is that possible in this day and age?” Those caught while registering subsequent firearms represent a tiny percentage of the total registered owners, and it’s frightening to think how many others unlawfully possess firearms.
Opponents of the bills, including the Hawaii Rifle Association, argue it would allow authorities to enter “law-abiding gun owners in a criminal database.” But the Honolulu Police Department rightly contends the Rap Back system is not a criminal database.
Don't miss out on what's happening!
Stay in touch with breaking news, as it happens, conveniently in your email inbox. It's FREE!
Rap Back is merely a computer database, compiling the fingerprints of people who have registered firearms — and if any of those people are arrested elsewhere in the country, the system will notify police here. Police in Hawaii will then have to track the cases to see whether they end in convictions.
Given that it would be nearly impossible to run manual criminal checks on all 350,000 gun owners on Oahu — not to mention tie up valuable resources — it simply makes sense to receive alerts automatically through Rap Back.
While lawmakers should support the measure’s intent, opponents have a point in questioning the proposed one-time fee of $62.75 to cover the cost to register a weapon and enroll in the Rap Back system — which seems high. Currently, only $14.75 is charged to register a firearm in Honolulu, which covers the fingerprinting. Robinson said those are set fees: $14.75 for fingerprinting, $30 for a state background check, $13 FBI Rap Back fee and $5 state Rap Back fee.
The Senate and House Judiciary committees — where the bills now head for consideration — should take a closer look at whether the $62.75 fee is warranted.
Citizens have the constitutional right to bear arms, but our state law prevents registered gun owners who run afoul of the law to own firearms. Being able to track whether gun owners have been arrested elsewhere would be a valuable tool for local police departments — one that is vital to protecting our communities.
46 responses to “Put gun owners on FBI’s database”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Feel good advocacy? Uh, gun control ‘shoots itself in the foot’ again.
Outrageous! Why not put all Hawaii residents in the F.B.I. database, “just in case” one of them does something illegal? After all, aren’t we all guilty until proven innocent?
“After all, aren’t we all guilty until proven innocent?” Nowadays? Yes, indeed. We’re in a people vs. big government phase of our civilization now. Guess who’s gonna lose?
Put drunk drivers… shoots, put all drivers, on a database, so every time they go into a bar, the police will be notified.
My puppies drive me nuts. Put them i jail, too?
Star-Advertiser Editors, Why? Did the gun owners broke any law?
Yes,kuro, in other States. A registered Sex Offender moves in from Texas shouldn’t we know?
but you don’t register the names, addresses and biographical information on all sexually active people into an fbi criminal data base on the off chance that less than 0.1% of them may have been arrested or will be arrested in the future.
“Shall not be infringed.” What part of that do you not understand you control freak!!!
on a similar thought, everyone, citizens and non-residents who enter the u.s. should be required to submit a dna sample to be placed in the fbi data base.
On a similar, similar thought…every baby born from now on out should be chipped like a dog or cat
Potato chip or corn chip?
Hock a DNA lugy(spit) sample for us Grand Forks people.
This is nothing more than automating and aggregating information that is already collected by police agencies. The level of paranoia is astounding.
Considering that you’re most likely to die by someone you know, it seems fairly prudent to put domestic abusers on that list.
Major Borges
Agree. However my only concern is if someone is charged with a felony but that charge is later dropped or if they are found innocent in a court of law, that information CANNOT be used against that individual if she wants to purchase a new firearm. Innocent until proven guilty. Rap Back MUST insure that the outcome of the felony arrest is included in the database, not just the initial felony arrest.
Inverse, I’m sure they mean “convicted” felon. That Uber WM had no convictions, but managed to use a gun to kill 6 in Mich.
According to the article, Rap Back provides ONLY the initial felony arrest to HPD. HPD then has to track down on their own the outcome of each of these felony arrests for Hawaii gun owners
what is a WM?
WM = Women Marines
WM? Warm Massage?
Amusing. 2 people commit a crime and we have the peanut gallery demanding that the FBI get a tool to break into any iPhone and then any smartphone rendering the privacy and freedom of literally billions of people moot. Many of whom live under despotic regimes who would love to get such information to repress their populations further.
But 10,000 people die from firearms in America annually, and we should do nothing.
It’s because the two were not white Christian murderers
That is NOT what the FBI is requesting. All they want is Apple to “unlock” the Islamic terrorist murderer’s phone and retrieve all messages the FBI could not extract from his “cloud” account. After that is done, the FBI does NOT want any software or any other information to use as a “master key” to use with other phones. The warrant is very specific and they want ONLY the information on the murderer’s phone. The phone can be dropped off to Apple and Apple would have full control of the process of hacking the phone. Others suggested that Apple can then destroy the phone, giving back ONLY the transcript of what information they extracted back to the FBI.
PS: Apple CEO is wrong and will put Apple in a bad light. The take home message should be is if you are an Islamic terrorist and a mass murderer of Americans, your “privacy” on your Iphone, email or anything else will be forfeited.
The take home message is that Apple is going to give up privacy for a billion devices and Google will then follow suit. Over 2 people. You are advocating giving Putin the ability to search the phones of journalists seeking to reveal his corruption.
A lot of people do not understand the technical nature of this and how this is not just one phone.
Wrong. The FBI wants Apple to create a special custom firmware RAM disk to force the iPhone to boot not from the regular firmware, but from the custom to bypass the security protocols which will then let the FBI plug the device into a cracker to brute force the passcode.
That is a backdoor by all definitions. Furthermore, this functions as a master key as the only “custom” notion about it is the specific signature for the iPhone. There is nothing that is stopping that from being removed and a generic version being produced.
Finally, once this gets created, there is NOTHING stopping every agency in the Government and every regime on this planet from demanding the same software. Nothing. At. All. Period. Nada.
You do not appear to understand the technical nature of this.
I thought I read somewhere that the FBI can already brute force the code, but because of built in delays between wrong combination codes, it would take 5 1/2 years to run all the combinations without the phone destroying itself.
lee1957, they aren’t sure they can. They don’t know if the autoformat on 10 wrong entries is active. That’s why they want the custom firmware to disable the security features and allow a direct hookup to a cracking machine. Otherwise, they have to manually enter codes into the screen and risk an autoformat.
There is allegedly another way to do it, but it involves dissembling the phone and drilling into the chip. Which is absurdly risky.
It is Unconstitutional (read illegal) to charge a fee (read tax) a person to use a right granted to them under the constitution. It has already gone before the supreme court and found unconstitutional. ( The Pole Tax required in order for a person to vote. ) Law abiding citizens should not be charged a fee (Taxed) for the rights granted under the 2nd Amendment. Not to mention, the cost, manpower, and the fact that criminals will not obey the law anyway.
HPD is already charging for registration, so where do we go next?
The fees, ridiculous wait times, and overall gun registry associated with legally owning firearms in Hawaii are certainly unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the people who could bring a good case are employed and can’t take the time to drag the case past the laughable Hawaii courts and 9th circuit until they get to a place where they might have a reasonable hearing.
Maybe the Outdoor Circle could do it on behalf of gun owners? They seem to have plenny time
Who is the pivot person in the Circle?
Good. Do it.
Why stop with legal gun owners? Why don’t we just register everybody in the state in the database? That way, we’ll know when any of us has been arrested anywhere, so we can take appropriate precautions. This article is lacking one useful bit of information–it appears that there have been zero instances of a gun owner getting arrested in another state and actually committing a crime with a gun here in Hawaii (other than failing to turn in the gun). You’d think with 350,000 registered owners here that we’d be able to find at least one who has been arrested elsewhere and come back here and committed a crime with a gun. The fact that we can’t should tell you just how much of a waste of thought this editorial was, and how much of a complete waste of time, effort and gun owner’s money it would be to force law abiding individuals to pay to be put into a criminal tracking database. Do you even recognize the constitution when you see it?
I agree. Most of the Mass Killings in the US have been by people who did not legally obtain the firearms. If you take the guns away from the honest people only the criminals will have them. That already seems to be the case.
The plan is not to “take the guns away.”
Not that it matters, but the guy in Michigan had no prior record, purchased his gun legally, and still went on a rampage. So, really it’s just a crap shoot.
SA Editorial : “Citizens have the constitutional right to bear arms, but our state law prevents registered gun owners who run afoul of the law to own firearms. Being able to track whether gun owners have been arrested elsewhere would be a valuable tool for local police departments — one that is vital to protecting our communities.”
2nd Amendment : “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Where does it imply that individual states may infringe on people’s rights by charging them $62.75 fee that will cover costs for a state mandate – that’ll benefit the police department with an automated system ?
You’ll create a hugh database of law-abiding gun owners and a deterrent for the criminal (<.001%) convicted felons who'll find other illegal means to purchase a weapon. A convicted felon will have his/her spouse/relative/friend purchase a weapon for them for their own personal use. They'll buy an unregistered weapon from someone that failed to register the weapon in the past. Weapon will remain with the felon in the home they live in. Are you really solving a problem or creating more government regulation that'll create more problems than they were intended to resolve?
Paranoid for sure. but then again with HPD in charge…..
This is an example of why I miss the mindset of “the powers that be” in Hawaii….NOT!
Hawaii has been sold out to Wall Street’s terms.
A car is also deemed as a weapon. That’s why it is registered with the government.
Why not put newspaper writers in an FBI database. Since they seem to want to repeal the 2nd amendment, how about repealing the first as well.
Our View. You mean your view. Try taking our guns.