By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
A display of anti-gun jitters by a member of the Oak Harbor, Wash. city council ignited a gun rights furor in the Pacific Northwest recently that found the mayor being lauded by pro-gun activists and an armed private citizen elevated to something of a celebrity.
The catalyst for this donnybrook was a letter from the Second Amendment Foundation last autumn to the City of Oak Harbor explaining that the city’s long-standing parks gun ban was illegal under Washington’s 30-year-old state preemption statute. Receipt of the letter set off a chain of events that could have consequences for one of more members of the council.
In the midst of the controversy, TGM confirmed that an effort had been mounted by anti-gunners to jam the city council chambers and keep gun rights advocates out. One gun opponent also tried to change the council’s meeting place to a local school, because that would have precluded anyone from bringing a firearm or even leaving it locked in their car on school poperty. Instead, the meeting will be held at the local fire hall.
Mayor Scott Dudley had advised the council in December that the SAF letter had been discussed by the city attorney and staff, and that it was suggested the ordinance be repealed as a housekeeping measure. But that was not good enough for a council faction led by Councilman Rick Almberg, who voted to table the issue.
One month later, local resident Lucas Yonkman, a disabled Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, showed up to address the council’s inaction, and that’s when the fireworks began. Yonkman explained that he carries a firearm daily for personal protection, and afterward, he was grilled by Almberg, who wanted to know if he was armed at the time.
At first the city attorney advised Yonkman that he did not have to answer, but he did so and when Almberg learned the veteran was armed, he proposed a measure to ban firearms from council meetings. When that failed on a voice vote, he left the meeting.
Mayor Dudley expressed his apologies to Yonkman for having been interrogated, and he also noted that having an armed citizen in the chambers made him feel safer.
A video of the nine-minute confrontation soon ended up on the Internet, and it went viral. Dudley began getting telephone calls from the press, and local talk radio made heroes of both the mayor and Yonkman. Almberg and fellow Councilman Joel Servatius, described as “a former member” of the NRA who is “not comfortable with people being able to carry guns around in places packed with children.”
But the controversy still wasn’t finished. SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb spoke to the mayor, who was caught in the uncomfortable position of being the likely chief defendant in a lawsuit seeking to erase the ordinance. Gottlieb sent a follow-up letter to the city, notifying them that he was already lining up potential plaintiffs for a lawsuit based on the same arguments used when SAF, the National Rifle Association, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the Washington Arms Collectors sued Seattle over an attempted parks gun ban.
Seattle fought that case and lost both at trial and at the Appeals Court level. The State Supreme Court refused to hear a second appeal, so Seattle was stopped from enacting a ban, and the preemption statute was strengthened in the process.
Dudley scheduled a second hearing on repealing the ordinance, and it was expected to be a standing-room-only audience. That much was confirmed when a volunteer Democrat precinct committee officer confirmed to TGM that efforts had been made to exclude gun owners, even when the council meeting was switched to the local fire station.
Pam Fick, a 20-year Oak Harbor resident and Navy veteran, who is also a gun owner but objects to the notion of guns being carried in parks, told TGM via telephone, “We’re trying to fill the room. That’s the only intention we have to make a point that they don’t belong in there.”
Her name and phone number were posted online at IslandPolitics.org, which she called a local “GOP Inquirer.”
Mayor Dudley was very unhappy with Almberg, suggesting that he has “forgotten what his job is and who he represents.”
“A couple of (council members) believe they are going to try to exercise power that they don’t have,” Dudley observed. “They’re trying to do a job that they have not been elected for. It’s sad to see; very disappointing.”
