Andrew Namiki Roberts is an Oahu photographer who wants to be able to protect himself as he carries his equipment to photo locations around the islands.
His weapon of choice: a Taser stun gun.
But Hawaii law does not permit him to carry such a gun, and that’s why he’s suing the state, claiming the ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defense.
After filing suit to upend the prohibition in April, Roberts’ attorneys Friday filed a motion for summary judgment in a move to overturn the ban even before a scheduled July trial date.
“I don’t want to say it’s a slam dunk,” Roberts’ attorney, Stephen Stamboulieh, said Monday. “But I think there’s no doubt the court will reach the affirmative.”
Only three states, including
Hawaii, still ban stun guns, he said, but proposed legislation promises to overturn Rhode Island law and litigation is taking aim at New York’s ban. Plenty of jurisdictions have had similar bans reversed in the last decade, he said.
“The writing’s on the wall,” Stamboulieh said.
Stamboulieh of Mississippi and co-counsel Alan Beck of San Diego are the same attorneys who represent the former law enforcement officer from Hilo who is challenging Hawaii’s restrictive open-carry gun law.
That law is now in doubt as a three-judge panel with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state’s requirement for getting a license to carry a firearm in public is a Second Amendment violation.
The state and Hawaii County are now asking the full court to take a second look at the decision.
As for stun guns, Hawaii’s regulations effectively ban electronic arms of all kinds to folks who are not in law enforcement.
Roberts is a citizen of the United Kingdom who moved to Hawaii in 2006 and lives here as a legal permanent resident.
In 2015 Roberts sued Honolulu in federal court after the Police Department denied his firearm permit based on a policy that required him to travel back to the United Kingdom to get a background check. After a few months the city agreed to a settlement and changed its policy.
In his latest foray in federal court, Roberts says he often hauls thousands of dollars’ worth of camera gear for his job, and he’s sometimes working in remote areas with no police presence.
The suit says he wants to buy an electric arm for self-defense inside and outside his home, and he wants the smallest amount of force necessary to repel an attack. He believes “a Taser is the most effective form of less-than-lethal self-defense” for him.
Stamboulieh said the motion for summary judgment was filed Friday because the issue does not lend itself to a trial, but to judgment as a matter of law.
“Under any of the tests this court may apply, Hawaii’s ban cannot survive constitutional muster,” the motion says.
The court document declares that 4.7 million electric arms are owned lawfully by civilians across America.
The motion also argues as a preliminary matter that electric arms are designed to incapacitate an assailant, not kill one, and that it is unconstitutional to ban a whole class of less-than-lethal arms.
“It simply cannot be that the government cannot ban handguns without violating the Second Amendment, but it may ban an entire class of less-than-lethal arms,” the motion says.
Removing Hawaii’s ban on electric arms will promote public safety, according to the motion, because it will give Roberts and others like him “an intermediate level of force that they can look to prior to using a firearm.”
A Taser uses replaceable cartridges containing inert, compressed nitrogen to fire two small probes that are attached to conductive wires. In models generally marketed to non-law enforcement officers, the wires are 15 feet in length, while officers generally use wires up to 25 feet long.
The probes are designed to penetrate clothing and embed in an attacker’s skin. An electric charge is sent over the wires into the probes to disrupt sensory and motor functions and inhibit muscular control.
