State senators Monday unanimously approved a measure to establish “continuous background checks” that alert police when Hawaii gun owners are arrested in another county or state.

That measure has been strongly opposed by the National Rifle Association and the Hawaii Rifle Association, which say that no other state in the nation uses the FBI’s criminal records database to keep tabs on gun owners the way Hawaii lawmakers are proposing to do.

Those convicted of felonies, violent crimes or selling drugs are banned from owning firearms here, but police in Hawaii have no system to alert them when a registered gun owner has been newly indicted or convicted in another county or state.

Senate Bill 2954 would authorize police to enroll firearm registrants in the FBI’s “Rap Back” database, which notifies police when gun owners are convicted of crimes elsewhere, police said.

If Gov. David Ige signs the bill, HRA President Harvey Gerwig said his organization might sue to try to overturn the new law in federal court. He said the HRA believes that if Senate Bill 2954 becomes law, it will violate the federal Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, which prohibits the creation of a national database of registered gun owners.

The proposed new law would amount to “taking every applicant and forcibly putting them in a criminal background tracking system that’s national,” Gerwig said. “It puts innocent people in a federal criminal database.”

SB 2954 cleared a final vote 24-0 in the state Senate on Monday with no debate. The bill was far more controversial in the House, where it survived a much closer 26-21 vote April 7, with four lawmakers absent.

House Judiciary Chairman Karl Rhoads (D, Chinatown-Iwilei-Kalihi) said he supports the background check measure because “it will literally keep firearms out of the hands of felons.”

Oahu now has about 300,000 gun owners, and each year 10,000 to 11,000 people try to register firearms in Honolulu. Police conduct a national background check on each applicant but do not repeat or update that check unless the owner returns to register another gun, police said. That means police have no ready way of knowing when gun owners commit crimes that disqualify them from owning firearms.

Currently, police charge about $15 to register a firearm, but the enrollment of gun owners into the federal system is expected to bump the cost to $62.75, police said. Only new registrants will be enrolled in the federal database, not existing gun owners.

Hawaii already has some of the toughest firearm laws in the nation, and Hawaii lawmakers have put forward a number of bills this year to further tighten the state’s gun controls.

Members of the state House gave notice Monday they plan to give final approval later this week to House Bill 625, which would add misdemeanor sexual assault and misdemeanor stalking to the list of criminal convictions that disqualify people from owning firearms or ammunition in Hawaii.

The HRA also opposes HB 625, Gerwig said. “Our concern about this bill is it is a misdemeanor, and conviction for a misdemeanor should never take your constitutional rights away,” he said. “That should only happen in conviction for a felony.”

The bill is supported by the Honolulu Police Department and state Attorney General Douglas Chin. Supporters cite national research showing that 76 percent of the women who are murdered and 85 percent of women who survived a murder attempt by a current or former intimate partner were stalked in the year before the attack.

“This and other studies demonstrate that while stalking may appear to be low-level, nonviolent behavior, it is often the first step in an escalating course of conduct that too often results in murder,” according to the bill. At least 11 states already prohibit people who are convicted of stalking from owning guns.

Gerwig said a misdemeanor harassment conviction could result from sending unwanted text messages or unwanted telephone calls, “and now you’ve lost a core constitutional right for a petty misdemeanor.” Gerwig also worried that people who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment in years past will now have their firearms confiscated by the police.

Overall, Gerwig said this has been a frustrating session as lawmakers passed what he considers to be “anti-gun bills” over the objections of hundreds of people who objected to the bills. “They’ve pretty much ignored the public outcry against this,” he said.