Gun question

[hawaiideborah]

quote:

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Originally posted by csgray

Edmond is giving very poor advice.

A friend of mine didn't get around to registering several guns that his father had left him, along with the rest of the contents of his house and outbuildings. When a vindictive neighbor informed the cops of the guns (he had sold them to the dad) it turned into a several year long legal nightmare for my friend. The final sentence was 5 years strict probation, random urine tests where he has 1 hour to report for the test if called (even if he is at work), and then another 5 years of looser probation.

The guns were not used in any crime, my friend was not accused of any crime other than possession of unregistered guns, and had a clean record until all this happened. The cops and prosecutor said they would have let him off if he had gone in himself to register the guns even several years late, but because he did not deal with it until the guns were reported he got the full weight of Hawaii's gun laws dropped on him.

If you own guns in Hawaii make sure you know the laws and follow them, the state takes gun crimes very seriously, and the prosecutors play hardball.

Carol

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The story Carol told is a scary one.
How did the police get into the house to get the guns to prove there were guns? Did they have a search warrant on a neighbor's say so? or can the police just search a house for firearms if they get a call from a neighbor?

On the other hand this seems like a law that may not be followed up and enforced consistantly. Why I say that is here on PW there have gun threads before where folks have posted under their real names stating they had not registered their guns and weren't going to. Those rants sorta sounded like the objection was political in nature. Whatever...
My point is that it seems as tho folks posting on PW in the past have felt comfortable stating they had not registered their firearms. These folks didn't get police coming to their door and searching.

Anyone know why more about this unregistered guns and what police actually have the right to do?