Police Department Pestered for PermitsAll day long yesterday High Sheriff Brown and Deputy Sheriff Chillingworth were pestered with applications for permission to carry firearms. In the majority of cases the applicants were business and professional men, who stated that while they did not expect to be held up, they wanted to be prepared for emergencies, and as they had no desire to infringe, the law, decided to ask for the necessary permit. Among the applicants were three doctors.
They were told by Sheriff Brown that he could give them no permit to carry a gun unless they were commissioned as special officers. He said, however, that if they thought they needed protection in the shape of a revolver, they could go ahead and carry one without interference from him, unless they shot some innocent person, in which case they were warned it would go hard with them.
"I'll guarantee." said Sheriff Brown to a reporter last night, "that if the audience at the Orpheum were searched, fifty guns would be found. I don't mind a man carrying a gun provided he brings us a man at the end of it now and again.
"There are undoubtedly a lot of unemployed at present in town, but I am of the opinion that the present scare is exaggerated. People hear of a hold-up and think so much about it that they get to be afraid of their own shadows. Then, again, I am of the opinion that a lot of curiosity seekers are going around of a night looking for footpads, burglars and the like. These individuals are seen in the dark by other persons, who in turn take them for footpads, and so the thing grows and the town is reported to be alive with criminals...."[The Hawaiian Gazette, Honolulu, H.T., Friday, January 17, 1902. Vol. XXXVII, No. 5. Pg. 5]
It is almost funny. if it were not so sad. That the citizen was worried about "infringing" an unconstitutional 'law'. Especially when the right to arms that it concerns, is a right that "shall not be infringed".
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