Despite emotional testimony from gun control advocates, House lawmakers put the brakes on a proposed “red flag” law for Hawaii that is intended to keep firearms away from people who may pose a danger to themselves or others.

Instead, House Public Safety Committee Chairman Gregg Takayama said he plans to order up a study of the proposal in House Bill 1543. Takayama said the proposed red flag law in that bill might actually weaken Hawaii’s existing system of using restraining orders to take guns away from people who are involved in domestic violence cases.

More than a dozen supporters of tighter firearms restrictions attended a hearing Wednesday morning at the state Capitol to support the red flag bill, including Kaneohe resident Terence Lee.

Lee was at his workplace in Seattle in 1992 when he was attacked by his partner and shot five times with a .22-caliber pistol. Lee said his attacker was asking questions that made no sense and was finally shot and killed by Seattle police.

“I tried to get away, I couldn’t get away, there was a lot of blood,” Lee told lawmakers during tearful testimony. “This was 27 years ago. Sandy Hook happened after that. I think about this every day.”

The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012 killed 20 children and six adults, and Lee described the wrenching feeling he gets from media reports of each new mass shooting in the U.S.

“We need to do something, anything. This would be a step toward preventing this from ever happening, because every time I hear about it, I know exactly what these people are going through, and it needs to stop,” he said.

Lawmakers also heard from Nonohe Botelho, 56, whose 28-year-old son Joel was shot and killed in 2011 by his childhood friend and Castle High School football teammate.

Makuola Collins, who pleaded guilt to manslaughter in the case, “clearly posed a threat,” Botelho said. The shooting might never have happened if police had been able to obtain a protective order and take away the gun he used, she said.

Botelho also reminded lawmakers of several other murders in Hawaii involving firearms, including the infamous televised standoff between police and John Miranda, who used a sawed-off shotgun to take a hostage at a Sand Island business in 1996.

“We will never know if law enforcement intervention could have made the difference between life and death in any of these cases. However, if this passes, and you do agree to pass this out, if it saves one parent from having to bury their child, their brother, their sister, their aunties, their uncles — if it prevents one person from having to bury their child, then it’s worth it,” she said.

But Devin Sasai, a licensed firearms dealer who owns Bushido Arms &Ammunition in Kalihi, described the bill as “a little bit of an overstep.”

“I wish we could, I’m sorry to say this, look into a crystal ball and predict when something’s going to happen. We can’t,” he said. National statistics show that violent crime is overwhelmingly committed with illegal guns, he said.

“So by putting more law-abiding citizens under the thumb, what are we going to accomplish?” he asked. As for the red flag proposal, “we cannot punish somebody for something they might do.”

According to testimony submitted by the state Judiciary, existing Hawaii law governing firearms and domestic abuse cases requires that when people are found to pose a threat to others, they are already prohibited from possessing guns. Those who are served with domestic abuse restraining orders are required to immediately surrender all guns, according to the Judiciary.

A recent study of firearms laws by the Hawaii Legislative Reference Bureau reported that California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington have all enacted “red flag” laws to temporarily prohibit individuals from possessing firearms if law enforcement, family members, or health care workers demonstrate those people pose a significant danger to themselves or others.

A bill to create a “red flag” law in Hawaii has already been approved by the Senate Committee on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs. That measure, Senate Bill 1466, now goes to the Senate Judiciary Committee for further consideration.