Hawai'i residents have registered guns at a record pace for each of the past four years, and appear headed for a new high again this year, preliminary figures show.

Nearly 26,000 firearms — an annual record — were registered with the four county police departments during 2008.

Yearly gun registrations in Hawai'i have marched steadily upward for most of the past decade — from about 13,600 in 2000 to 25,996 in 2008 — said Paul Perrone, chief of research and statistics for the Hawaii Department of the Attorney General.

Hawai'i firearms dealers and Hawaii Rifle Association officials say the rise in gun ownership here is in line with a similar trend across much of the Mainland.

They attribute the increase in gun sales to a combination of factors, most notably the two Persian Gulf Wars, the terrorist attack on New York City and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, and most recently, the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States and fears he might back a prohibition on future sales of certain types of firearms.

Harvey Gerwig II, president and a director of the Hawaii Rifle Association, attributes the increase in gun sales to how Americans feel about their country and their leaders.

"When people don't feel confident about the direction the country is going, they look for another way to up their confidence level," Gerwig said.

RECENT INCREASE

The number of firearms registered here each year may be just a fraction of those actually in Hawai'i. Perrone said police estimate there could be approximately one for every man, woman and child in the state.

"Firearms Registrations in Hawaii, 2008" a report authored by Perrone and released in June, says that the biggest increase in gun registrations occurred last year, when Hawai'i's economy tanked.

The state's unemployment rate is the highest it has been in more than a decade and the local economy is in a prolonged slump, but even in lean times Hawai'i residents have found the money to buy handguns and rifles.

The 25,996 firearms registered last year was a 19 percent increase from 2007.

Much of the growth in firearms registrations here took place during the past four years.

Unlike most states, Hawai'i does not require potential gun purchasers to pass an "instant criminal background check," because Hawai'i gun registration laws are among the most stringent in the country and go well beyond the instant check.

But some gun dealers here have would-be gun buyers undergo the instant check to quickly see if there is anything in the buyer's background that would prohibit them from buying a gun.

The number of people in Hawai'i applying for an instant criminal background check jumped by 37 percent during the first nine months of this year compared with the same period last year, according to data collected by the FBI and reported by Bloomberg News.

THE OBAMA FACTOR?

Nationwide, the year-to-date number of background checks through September is 19.3 percent higher than during the first nine months of 2008, the news service reported.

There were 7,807 requests for background checks from January through September in Hawai'i, compared with 5,695 during the same period in 2008, the news service said.

Kentucky led the nation, recording nearly 1.6 million requests for gun-purchase instant background checks during the first nine months of the year, up a little more than 15 percent from last year.

In Kentucky, the number of gun-purchase background check requests during the first nine months of this year was roughly equal to 37 percent of that state's population, according to the news service analysis of the FBI data.

The HRA's Gerwig believes the biggest single factor driving gun sales in the past year was Obama's election.

"There is a poster circulating in the pro-gun community with a picture of Obama on it wearing a nice suit with a headline that says, 'Gun Salesman of the Year,' " Gerwig said.

Gerwig said that though Obama did not make any direct statements during the final months leading up to his election about increasing restrictions on gun ownership, Obama's voting record as a U.S. senator and Illinois state legislator showed he voted in favor of virtually every piece of legislation restricting gun ownership that crossed his desk.

"Just before the election, there were about 3,500 AR-15s — the civilian version of the M16 — ready at the (national) wholesale level and all were snapped up within a day of his election" Gerwig said. "People who were concerned their Second Amendment rights might be infringed upon drove the shelves dry of AR-15s."

FIRST-TIME BUYERS

Al Mongeon, a federally licensed firearms dealer in Hawai'i who specializes in online firearms purchases, estimates that about 5 percent of his business comes from first-time buyers.

"For the most part, my first-time buyers are the spouses of members of our armed services who are about to deploy overseas. They want to make sure their wife and family are protected at home while they're away," Mongeon said.

He estimated his sales to first-time buyers increased about 20 percent per year over the past three years.

Mongeon, the long-serving membership chairman for the HRA, said membership in its parent organization, the National Rifle Association, "is increasing exponentially."

While county, state and federal officials can track the influx of firearms into Hawai'i, there is virtually no way to keep tabs on guns being shipped out of the state.

For that reason, it is hard to say how many firearms are actually in the hands of Hawai'i residents.

"The Honolulu Police Department has hard-copy gun registration forms dating back to the '30s," Perrone said.

"HPD estimates the total number of guns out there at somewhere over a million. Estimates done independently by (the Hawai'i Department of the Attorney General) have arrived at the same number," Perrone said.