By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
A coalition of some of Washington State’s firearms community leaders, including Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, has launched a grassroots campaign to counter the well-financed gun control initiative backed by a Seattle-based gun control group, while also preventing firearms confiscation “by any government agency…without due process.”
Protect Our Gun Rights (POGR) includes leaders from the 17,000-member Washington Arms Collectors (WAC), Gun Owners Action League of Washington (GOAL) and the Bellevue-based CCRKBA.
The coalition was formed during an emergency meeting of the WAC Board of Directors. Gottlieb sits on that board. They voted unanimously to support the effort with up to $200,000 which they hope to raise initially with member contributions, and CCRKBA also committed his organization to an equal amount.
Giving the POGR group a strategic edge is that it also has an initiative to the legislature – I-591 – filed quietly in mid-May, weeks before the 15-page gun control measure was submitted by the well-heeled Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR). That group raised more than $1 million mostly with the support of wealthy Seattle venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, with a veiled threat from Mayors Against Illegal Guns that billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will throw his considerable bankroll behind that campaign.
It is important that the POGR initiative was filed earlier because if both measures make it to the 2014 ballot, I-591 will appear first.
The announcement comes as good news to Northwest gun rights activists on several popular forums including Northwest Firearms, Seattle Guns, Shooters Northwest, Hunting-Washington and Open Carry Washington. Since the WAGR effort was launched, they had been debating and lamenting the fact that it appeared there was no unified opposition to protect gun rights.
By some estimates, the signature gathering effort to put POGR’s initiative in front of the legislature in January will cost between $500,000 and $1 million. WAC is allowing POGR to solicit contributions at its monthly gun shows in Puyallup and Monroe. Also, contributions and requests for petitions may be sent to POGR at 12500 N.E. Tenth Place, Bellevue, WA 98005, or call (425) 454-4911.
WAC President John Rodabaugh, a practicing attorney and licensed firearms dealer, was matter-of-fact about facing a “rich man’s juggernaut” that already has amassed a small fortune.
“I don’t have a billion dollars,” he said, “but we’re going to do all that we can.”
It is the classic David v. Goliath political battle, pitting a relative handful of deep pocket anti-gun elitists against a grassroots army consisting largely of blue collar sportsmen, hobbyists, competitors and collectors –many of whom live paycheck-to-paycheck, but who will not surrender their privacy, or their gun rights, without a fight. Members of the WAC board did not commit to such an ambitious funding effort without considerable discussion, but Rodabaugh noted, “This is what we were elected for; to show some leadership when our organization is threatened.”
The WAGR gun control measure apparently poses a significant threat to WAC’s ability to conduct gun shows, a problem shared by other gun shows operated in various Southwest and Eastern Washington locations.
However, POGR’s I-591 would only add two brief new sections to state firearms statutes specifying that:
- “It is unlawful for any government agency to confiscate guns or other firearms from citizens without due process.”
- “It is unlawful for any government agency to require background checks on the recipient of a firearm unless a uniform national standard is required.”
Gottlieb told TGM the WAGR measure, Initiative 594, is “over reaching and over-complicated” while I-591 is straightforward. It would put to rest one of the greatest concerns of gun owners – especially those who migrated north from California, where gun registration and bans came incrementally and now background checks are even required for ammunition purchases – about registration and ultimately confiscation. And, it points to the need for a uniform national standard on background checks.
“The firearms community tried to work with the legislature earlier this year,” he recalled. “It’s almost like some people on the other side wanted that effort to fail, just so they could use their fat bank accounts to buy gun rights here in Washington.”
Another member of the WAC board observed that Washington “is the Alamo,” where gun owners are drawing a line in the sand and making a stand. National attention that will be paid to the competing initiative campaigns in Washington, because if gun prohibitionists essentially buy an election here, they will do it elsewhere. Bloomberg is committed to spending millions of dollars on gun control efforts across the country in an attempt to shape gun laws to match his vision for America, which has also included telling people how much soda they can drink, what to do with their garbage and other “nanny state” edicts.
It could take some 350,000 signatures to put I-591 in front of state lawmakers, but Rodabaugh said this battle is necessary, and it begins with the distribution of petitions at the WAC gun show this weekend, where thousands of ready-made foot soldier activists will be streaming through the doors.
