State law placing gun owners in a database

Question

As per the article regarding Hawaii placing its gun owners in a database and some of the below quoted text from it, I could see this being a growing trend on a state by state basis.

Question

Could any of this technically be a violation of any U.S. citizens' rights in any way, or conflict with previously issued laws?

---

The Goods

That database, which is called the "Rap Back" system, is operated by the FBI and would notify police when a gun owner is arrested for a crime anywhere in the United States.

This will allow county police departments in Hawaii to evaluate whether the firearm owner may continue to legally possess and own firearms," the Hawaii governor's office said in a statement.

"This is about our community's safety and responsible gun ownership," Gov. David Ige in a statement. "This system will better enable our law enforcement agencies to ensure the security of all Hawaii residents and visitors to our islands."

The Bads

The NRA expressed its displeasure with the new state law tweeting: "Exercising constitutional rights in #Hawaii now gets you entered into a federal watchlist, er, database."

During the public comment process regarding the bill, opponent Quentin Kealoha asked: "Why are law abiding citizens exercising their constitutional right being entered into a criminal database? Would you enter people exercising their right to free speech into a criminal database?"

Additional

The third new law requires gun owners to surrender their firearms and ammunition to the police if they've been disqualified to possess the weapons "due to a diagnosis of having a significant behavioral, emotional, or mental disorder, or due to emergency or involuntary admission to a psychiatric facility."

If the person does not voluntarily give up their arms, the police chief has permission to seize the weapons.

_source

Answer 1

Per the Firearm Owner's Protection Act,

No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners' Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established.

Sure seems illegal to me.

Answer 2

In the United States, weapon ownership is a constitutional right (second amendment). The federal government cannot remove a person's right to own a gun without due process. The fourteenth amendment extended that to include state governments. This was only officially recognized in 2010 for the second amendment, although it was previously recognized for other rights as early as 1925 or even 1897. That is called incorporation.

"due to a diagnosis of having a significant behavioral, emotional, or mental disorder, or due to emergency or involuntary admission to a psychiatric facility."

The question that arises is if "diagnosis" is due process. The more normal process would be to have a fitness hearing. It is of course easier to get a diagnosis or admission than a fitness hearing decision. It's also a bit unclear about what they mean here. If they hold a fitness hearing and use the diagnosis or admission decision from that, that would almost certainly be due process (leaving wiggle room for weird edge cases).

A similar question exists over whether they can change someone's gun ownership status based just on an arrest. They might have to wait for a conviction. In some circumstances, they might be able to suspend someone's right to own firearms during the course of a court case.

It's worth noting that most of this has not been tested in court. As such, a court could rule that arrest, diagnosis, or admission is in fact sufficient to meet the due process requirement. Until the Supreme Court gives a definitive answer, we won't be able to say for certain one way or the other.

Answer 3

So what it looks like is happening is that Hawaii police are now allowed to run the names of gun owners who reside in the State of Hawaii against the FBI's Rap Back system, which isn't a database of Gun Owners but rather a tool that will aggregate all publicly available court records and will return any arrests or convictions of felony or misdemeanor crimes where the individual was convicted.

Rap Back is used by many different agencies and private companies to check against an employees and they may get an alert as soon as something changes. It appears that the new law would allow Hawaii to include updates on citizens whom exercise 2nd amendment rights.

I'm not familiar with the process, but as Rap Back is used to check employee's criminal history, I suspect there may need to be consent documentation to put an employee on the list, or put the name into RAP BACK as part of a search for an active investigation by Law Enforcement. There could be some legal questions into if the government should require consent to exercise a right or run names when there is no reasonable suspicion of a crime having been committed, but as other answers say, that's not been brought before any courts.