DEPARTMENT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL RELEASES ANNUAL FIREARM REGISTRATION STATISTICS

News Release 2025-78 from Hawaii Attorney General July 23, 2025

HONOLULU — The Hawaiʻi Department of the Attorney General released its annual Firearms Registration in Hawaiʻi report today detailing firearm registration statistics for calendar year 2024.

A total of 16,879 personal/private applications for permits to acquire firearms were processed statewide during 2024, marking a 28.3% decrease from 23,528 applications processed in 2023. Of the applications processed in 2024, 95.7% (16,147) were approved and resulted in issued permits, 2.8% (467) were voided (rejected for technical reasons), and 1.6% (265) were denied due to various disqualifying factors. The 16,147 permits issued statewide in 2024 cover a total of 44,624 firearms registered throughout the year, resulting in a 13.9% decrease from 51,807 firearms registered during 2023. Approximately half (26,267, or 50.7%) of the firearms registered during 2024 were imported from out of state, with the balance accounted for by transfers of firearms that were previously registered in Hawaiʻi. Rifles and shotguns comprised 41.2% (18,373) and 9.6% (4,300) of total registrations, respectively. The remaining 49.2% (21,951) of firearms registered throughout 2024 were handguns.

Firearm registration activity increased dramatically over the course of the 25 years for which these data have been systematically compiled and reported. From 2000 through 2024, the number of statewide permit applications annually processed increased by 160.1%, the number of firearms annually registered leapt by 227.7%, and the number of firearms annually imported climbed 215.6%.

Conservative estimates from the late-1990s placed the number of privately owned firearms in Hawaiʻi at somewhere over one million. Adding to that during the 2000 through 2024 period, a total of 902,643 firearms were registered (including some more than once, by different owners) and 470,250 were imported, while an unknown number of firearms permanently left the state.

The report, entitled Firearm Registrations in Hawaiʻi, 2024, provides a range of additional state and county statistics on firearm permits and registrations; permit denials and revocations; prohibited weapon confiscations, and licenses to carry firearms for private security personnel. Statistics on carry licenses for private citizens are published by the Department of the Attorney General in a new annual report series entitled Licenses To Carry Handguns in Hawai‘i (available here).

The full report can be downloaded from the Department of the Attorney General’s Research and Statistics website at https://ag.hawaii.gov/cpja/rs/firearms/ and here.

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