Waianae Shootings May Spur A Push To Strengthen Hawaii’s Self-Defense Laws

Not long after the recent shooting deaths at a party on Oahu’s West Side, where a man rammed his tractor into several vehicles at a neighbor’s house and then opened fire, Darius Kila was on the scene.

Kila, a Democrat who represents nearby Nanakuli and Maili in the Hawaii House of Representatives, said he was horrified by the Aug. 31 shootings that took the lives of three women. The fourth person to die was the tractor driver, Hiram Silva, who fatally shot the women and wounded two other people before he was shot and killed by Rishard Keamo-Carnate, according to Honolulu police.

Keamo-Carnate was arrested on suspicion of murder in the second degree but later released. Honolulu Prosecutor Steve Alm has not commented on the matter, which is under investigation.

While Honolulu Police Department officers would not allow the legislator to enter an active crime scene, “I just wanted to make sure everybody was OK,” Kila said Friday.

But Kila wants to do more than that. He wants to amend state law to reassure his constituents that, in a worst-case scenario like what happened late on a Saturday night on Waianae Valley Road, “they can defend their loved ones and don’t have to worry about some form of legal repercussion.”

He is among a group of legislators who will likely reintroduce legislation in January that clarifies when a person does not have to retreat before using deadly force in self-defense if they are in their home or on their property. It was one of six related measures proposed in the House in the 2024 session, but none received a committee hearing.

Now, with Keamo-Carnate’s lawyer arguing that his client acted legally in self-defense, Kila and other supporters of amending Hawaii’s law on self-defense believe there may be momentum.

“This is happening in our backyard,” said Kila. “It doesn’t mean it can’t happen in your backyard tomorrow.”

Defining Stand-Your-Ground

The state law on use of force for self-protection, Hawaii Revised Statutes 703-304, says that force is justifiable when someone believes it “is immediately necessary for the purpose of protecting himself against the use of unlawful force by the other person.”

That protection is justified not only against threat of death, but also serious bodily injury, kidnapping, rape or forcible sodomy.

Use of force is not justified under other circumstances, however, including when someone is resisting arrest by a law enforcement officer or when the person using the force provoked the incident.

HRS 703-704 also states that deadly force is not justified if it can be avoided “with complete safety by retreating or by surrendering possession of a thing to a person asserting a claim of right thereto.”

HPD Chief Joe Logan said last week that Hawaii is not a stand-your-ground state, meaning a state where people can defend themselves with lethal force without first trying to escape or retreat from a threatening situation.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, in the 1980s there were a handful of state laws that addressed immunity from prosecution in use of deadly force against another person who unlawfully and forcibly entered a person’s residence. They were nicknamed “make my day” laws.

In 2005, Florida passed a stand-your-ground law based on what’s known as the “castle doctrine.” The Florida law, according to the NCSL, states that someone who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked “in any other place where he or she has a right to be” does not have to retreat and is permitted to “meet force with force, including deadly force, if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

Today, at least 28 states have laws that say there is no duty to retreat “in any place in which one is lawfully present.” At least 10 of those states include stand-your-ground language.

Eight states, including California, Oregon and Washington, permit the use of deadly force in self-defense “through judicial decisions or jury instructions,” the NCSL says.

But Hawaii is one of 21 states, along with California, Oregon and Washington, that have stopped short of stand-your-ground statutes, which Everytown for Gun Safety calls “shoot first” laws that allow people to shoot and kill in public “even if they can safely walk away from the situation.”

Some research raises doubts about the efficacy and equity of stand-your-ground.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit founded by Michael Bloomberg in 2013 that advocates for gun control, says shoot-first laws “dramatically escalate violence, leading to 150 additional gun deaths each month nationwide.”

The laws also “drastically reduce consequences, with homicides in which white shooters kill Black victims deemed justifiable five times more frequently than when the situation is reversed,” the organization says.

A 2021 study from the National Institutes of Health reached similar conclusions.

“In some U.S. states, most notably Florida, stand-your-ground laws may have harmed public health and safety and exacerbated social inequities,” the report states.

‘Sense Of Security’ Threatened

The six bills proposed last session by more than a dozen lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, vary in scope but share the goal of empowering citizens in threatening situations.

Among the proposals was House Bill 86, which would have clarified that someone who uses deadly force in self-defense does not have a duty to retreat if they are in their dwelling or on their property, “unless they are the initial aggressor.”

“The Legislature finds that the people of Hawaii have a fundamental right to be safe in their homes,” the bill read. “However, the recent rise in violent crimes is threatening the public’s sense of security.”

The bill cites HPD’s 2021 annual report that found Oahu had seen a rise in violent and property-related crimes including murder, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft.

Introduced by Kila and fellow Democratic Reps. Sean Quinlan and Daniel Holt, the bill states that it is “imperative that residents be allowed to defend themselves when in their home, even when using deadly force if necessary, but that the use of deadly force is less justified when the person using force is at the person’s place at work.”

Quinlan, who took the lead on HB 86, represents House District 47, which encompasses Oahu’s North Shore and parts of the Windward Side.

“For me, the genesis of the bill was really that I represent a very rural district,” he said. “We are short-staffed as far as police go, and even with more staffing the response times are always going to be slower in rural areas.”

Quinlan said he was inspired to push HB 86 in part because he said there was an attempted break-in at his mother’s house. The would-be intruder was scared off by a barking dog, but Quinlan said he left behind a “robbery toolkit” in the yard — “screwdrivers and pliers and hammers and things like that.”

“So that was obviously a really scary moment for my family,” he said. “And I looked into it and realized that we have this duty-to-retreat clause in Hawaii. And it didn’t seem fair to me that, hypothetically, if the robber had tried to enter and my parents had defended themselves.”

Quinlan does not favor calling his legislation a stand-your-ground bill because of the negative connotations associated with the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012. He said self-defense is not a gun issue so much as it is a fundamental right.

Two of the self-protection bills came from the minority caucus in the House, and for similar reasons expressed by Democrats.

“If a stand-your-ground law was passed and established here, hopefully this would basically give common-sense protections to law-abiding citizens when they use their firearms as the Second Amendment (intended) — protection of themselves and their families,” said Republican Rep. Diamond Garcia, whose district includes Ewa and Kapolei.

“If somebody is encroaching on your property — like for instance in Waianae, where that suspect was ramming vehicles and people with his heavy equipment machine and then shooting them — I mean, the homeowner used a registered firearm the exact way that it was intended for,” Garcia said.

‘You Can Already Kill Somebody If You’re Threatened’

None of the six bills received a hearing in the only committee to which they were referred, the House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee. Chair David Tarnas was traveling out of country and did not respond to media inquiries last week.

But Sen. Karl Rhoads, Tarnas’s counterpart on the Senate side where the bills would eventually end up if passed in the House, does not think HRS 703-304 needs to be amended.

“If you look at the current statute, you can kill somebody — and legally — if your life is threatened,” he said. “And I believe when you’re in your own house you have no duty to retreat.”

Rhoads said the statute does include circumstances “where if you’re sure you can get away without getting injured, you are obligated to do so. But in your own house, you’re not under that obligation.”

Rhoads said it’s also legal to shoot somebody on the street if someone believes their life or that of another person is in danger of serious bodily harm.

“So I think the short answer is I don’t think it needs to be changed,” he said. “You can already kill somebody if you’re threatened.”

Kila, the West Side representative, said he respects the authority and expertise of the House and Senate judiciary chairs.

“They are the subject matter experts,” he said. “But ultimately it’s tough, because I can point to probably several hundred people in everybody’s district that would support a measure like this. I don’t want to make it a red or blue issue, but obviously this is sometimes an issue.”

The Waianae shootings and the renewed calls for self-defense legislation come as Hawaii has experienced major changes in its gun laws. A 2022 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court found that people have a constitutional right to carry weapons in public.

On Friday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Hawaii can enforce a law banning firearms on beaches and in parks, bars and restaurants.

Everytown for Gun Safety ranks Hawaii No. 6 in terms of the strongest gun laws. California is No. 1.

Still, the issue of defending the home is not likely to go away.

As recently as 2022, for example, a Circuit Court judge declared a mistrial in a manslaughter case involving an Ewa Beach man who shot a rifle through his locked front door from inside his townhouse in 2019. It killed an intoxicated neighbor who was trying to open what he thought was the door to his own home.