Greetings. Thank you all for participating in the attempt to get Hawaii legislators to legalize our natural Constitutionally-guaranteed civil right to bear arms. Unfortunately, all the CCW bills introduced in this 2016 legislative session are DEAD, as none were heard in committee by the deadline earlier in the week. Not one single one of them, on either the Senate or House side, was even granted a hearing in committee, much less a committee vote. Given that “bear[ing] arms” is an enumerated right in both the Hawaii and U.S. Constitutions that “shall not be infringed”, and that not one single person in the state of Hawaii currently has a CCW license, and that these legislators have taken an oath to uphold both those Constitutions, one has to wonder how those legislators think they are upholding their oaths of office. I've asked them that very question, and never gotten an answer. I'm not happy about it. I wrote all the legislators in both bodies, and I separately specifically wrote the committee members, and chairpersons more than once asking them to hold hearings on the entire list of CCW bills. Not only did they not hold hearings, they did not respond to my inquiries with an explanation of why they chose not to hold hearings. In fact, they did not even respond to my emails with the generic “thank you for contacting me” that so many legislators use to acknowledge receipt of an inquiry from a constituent/citizen. It seems our input, even just asking questions, can be ignored with impunity by these people that supposedly “represent” us as “civil servants” who are tasked with creating laws “with the consent of the governed”. Did I mention I'm not happy about any of this? I'm guessing that next year the same bills will be introduced again, and completely ignored again. The only way things could change is if a significant number of different legislators were elected in the November 2016 elections. At the local level it seems highly unlikely that the anti-liberty legislators will lose enough, or any, numbers to continue to overwhelmingly control Hawaii's lawmaking bodies, as well as the executive and judicial branches of government. So where else might we find relief? One possibility is the judicial branch. Unfortunately, the Ninth Circuit, of which Hawaii is a part, is dominated by anti-liberty judges, and they will no doubt rule in alignment with those values in the current and upcoming cases (Peruta/Richards, Young, etc.) which deal with bearing arms outside the home. With the death of Supreme Court justice Scalia, any appeals of those cases to the Supreme Court are unlikely to even be taken by the court, much less ruled upon favorably. Even when Scalia was there the court had refused to take numerous cases similar to Hawaii's “discretionary issue” law re CCW. The other possibility, which now appears to be our only near future option, would be that the Presidency is won by a pro-liberty, pro-firearms rights individual, and the U.S. House and Senate also would be majorities with those inclinations. It would then be possible that some kind of national reciprocity law could be passed, which would cause Hawaii to have to legally recognize CCW licenses or permits from all other states. In that case, we could either have “out of state” licenses (such as Utah, Arizona, etc. grant), or Hawaii would make some provision for it's own citizens to acquire the legal right to carry via some kind of “shall issue” legislation in order to conform to a more national standard. Yeah, it's a stretch, and a LOT of “ifs” and “maybes”, but it seems to be all we have, and thus I strongly recommend that people vote in November, even if it will be, as usual, the “lesser of two evils”. That means our fate, as far as our ability to legally exercise our rights, in once again in the hands of politicians. And I really don't like that. At all. But I'm still going to vote. (The next president will also likely appoint 2 or 3 Supreme Court justices that will likely serve for 30 or more years.) I'm open to other strategies and suggestions. Thanks again for participating and taking some time to attempt to influence our lawmaking in favor of our rights. At least it's some kind of civics lesson, but I'm not sure what the lesson was!