This image released by the Seattle Police on their “Blotter” website shows the gun recovered at the scene of a shooting that resulted in the death of a repeat offender. (SPD photo)
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
A well-funded gun control group that financed the $10 million-plus initiative requiring so-called “universal background checks” in Washington State in 2014 is at it again, launching another campaign, this time aimed at extreme risk protection orders.
The Alliance for Gun Responsibility (formerly the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility) made the announcement during a media event in Seattle. Declaring that they are “going back to the ballot” to push their agenda. They contend that the state legislature “caved to the gun lobby” so it is up to them to press for more restrictive gun laws.
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, noted that this new initiative is built around a piece of legislation that failed to make it out of committee.
“Anti-gunners couldn’t even get this bill out of a Democrat-controlled legislative committee, because it totally violates due process,” he observed. “Their only hope of forcing this on the citizens of Washington State is to buy the ballot measure by spending millions of dollars to dupe low information voters.”
When they pressed for “universal background checks” in 2014, they campaigned with the claim that their issue was supported by 80 to 90 percent of the voters. However, on Election Day, they were only able to garner less than 60 percent of the vote, passing their measure but hardly by the margin they had claimed.
The 2014 measure, Initiative 594, has been repeatedly shown to have fallen short in its intended mission of keeping guns out of the wrong hands. During the first year of its effectiveness, a cursory glance at crime stories and the Seattle Police Blotter showed a string of cases involving people who had guns illegally.
A few days after the new initiative was announced, the fatal shooting of an armed convicted felon by Seattle Police reinforced Gottlieb’s criticism of the “background check” measure.
Alan Gottlieb
“They’re claiming that I-594 was a success because it allegedly blocked more than 100 transactions of allegedly prohibited people,” he said of the initiative proponents. “But where are the arrests, prosecutions and convictions for the people who committed a felony by lying while trying to get a gun? Where is the evidence that the people who were blocked didn’t get guns by some illicit means? To suggest that their measure helped prevent crimes is an insult to common sense.
“Now the same billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group wants to foist another gun control package onto Washington voters,” he added. “Nobody wants guns to fall into the wrong hands, but the devil is always in the details of these schemes. It tells us a lot that Democrats in the House couldn’t even pass this idea. If this didn’t pass the smell test in Olympia, it shouldn’t get the signatures to put it on the ballot.”
Seattle police captured the shooting on video, and also released an image of the gun recovered at the scene, a Springfield XD-S .45 ACP, a compact gun with a polymer frame, on their Police Blotter page. Taylor had a long criminal history and had done time in prison. His record reportedly included robbery, rape, assault and unlawful possession of a firearm, according to the Seattle Times.
This new measure, according to KOMO News, the ABC affiliate in Seattle, would “empower family members and police to intervene if they see someone as a threat to themselves or others so that person cannot access a gun.” It came just days after formal legislation pushing the same idea died in the House Appropriations Committee.
There is no small amount of irony in this story, because the Washington House of Representatives voted 93-4 to approve a bill aimed at suicide awareness education and prevention, which has the support of major firearms groups. Gottlieb was involved in the process since early 2015.
He has repeatedly told TGM that “This isn’t about gun control, it’s about suicide prevention.”
There are concerns from gun owners that the legislation, and any initiative wrapped around it, has some due process problems, despite claims to the contrary by proponents. At the Washington Arms Collectors monthly gun show in Puyallup two days after the measure was introduced, gun owners were alarmed and ready to fight back.
However, they realize they are up against a well-financed gun control lobby, so perhaps instead of taking them head-on, other strategies will be employed.
Protect Our Gun Rights, the umbrella group that fought I-594 two years ago, is also gearing up for battle against this new measure.
