Gun maker Smith & Wesson is suing the state of Hawaii over what would appear to be excessive fees related to accessing public records in relation to firearm issues.
The state of Hawaii wanted over $27,000 for several record to be released to Smith & Wesson and the company is saying that other states don’t charge this much and that this is the state’s way of preventing the records from ever being released.
As reported in Civil Beat:Â
The AG’s office denied some of those records, claiming that disclosure would frustrate a legitimate government function, according to the lawsuit. For the records that could be released, the AG’s office wanted nearly $23,000.
The office said it needed hundreds of hours to review and segregate those records. For just the RFP request, it charged Smith & Wesson $2.50 for every 15 minutes spent searching for records and $5 for every 15 minutes spent reviewing those documents.
The AG’s office asked for half of the total fees, about $12,000, before the records could be released.
In July 2021, the gun company sent a second, narrower request in an effort to reduce costs. Instead, the AG’s office set a higher estimate of $27,000 to search for the records and review them.
What Smith & Wesson is looking for in this lawsuit is a realistic cost for these records, but what are these records?
The records that Smith & Wesson wants to get their hands on are not unusual, the gun maker wants to get their hands on communications from the Firearms Accountability Counsel Task Force(FACTF ) to the Attorney General’s Office. Smith & Wesson also requested a handful of proposals from the AG’s office related to firearm issues and a log of records requests made to the AG’s office.
The record that likely drew ire from the state was the communications from the Firearms Accountability Counsel Task Force. This group is a collage of law firms that are looking to create more gun laws through the guise of preventing gun violence.
Smith & Wesson likely caught wind of an upcoming proposal in Hawaii that would impact their business and wanted to take a deeper look before anything happened.
