By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
Documents recovered by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in its Public Records Act probe of Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s office’s gun control activities has uncovered an e-mail exchange that reveals Washington anti-gunners want to overturn that state’s model preemption law and make it more difficult to obtain a concealed pistol license.
Washington’s preemption statute dates back 30 years, and it has had concealed carry since 1935. But gun prohibitionists at Washington Ceasefire want to undo those restraints to allow cities the authority to set their own gun laws. They also would like to give police the ability to deny someone a CPL, the documents indicate.
More importantly, this agenda dates back months before the Sandy Hook tragedy.
In a June 2, 2012 e-mail to Beth Hester, McGinn’s director of Public Affairs, Ceasefire Board President Ralph Fascitelli outlined his wish list:
- Overturn state law of preemption..won’t be easy but who can argue that cities shouldn’t have this power
- Much harsher penalties on underage possession of guns, (sic) Currently you need to be 21 to own a handgun but it takes four possessions before the penalty matters. Conversely an 18-year-old driver with a whiff of alcohol loses her gun privileges first time around
- Make it much more difficult to get a concealed weapons permit..needs more research but is doable and pertinent
“And lastly from a marketing standpoint,” Fascitelli wrote, “we need a nice name to wrap this under. .. Perhaps the Safer Seattle Campaign.”
The second item on Fascitelli’s list dealing with teens illegally carrying handguns actually became a bipartisan project launched by King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg with support from CCRKBA. It was attractive to gun owners because it targeted gang bangers and other teen criminals while leaving law-abiding gun owners alone.
In that e-mail, Fascitelli also pushed for a “gun free zone” campaign that was not launched until this past summer.
“He can lead a Gun Free Zone campaign among private establishments such as restaurants, coffee shops, retail stores, etc.” Fascitelli wrote. “These places have the ability and discretion to prevent guns in their store just as they can prevent dogs and people without shoes and shirts.”
“The Second thing he can do,” Fascitelli continued, “is a public health campaign asking people to think twice before they have a gun in the home.”
He hinted that there might also be an initiative effort to close the so-called “gun show loophole.”
Four days later, on June 6, 2012, Fascitelli reiterated that erasing the current “shall issue” requirement in state law and ending reciprocity with other states was one of his “short term legislative priorities” for the 2013 session.
There were other revelations in the June 6 e-mail.
First, Fascitelli noted that ending the state preemption law was a “boggrt (bigger) fight” that would be waged via the state’s initiative process. Currently, a group of well-financed Seattle anti-gunners is pushing Initiative 594, a 15-page gun control measure disguised as a universal background check effort, is gathering signatures.
I-594 is the handiwork of the so-called Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR), and is facing off with Initiative 591, a measure that prohibits government gun confiscation without due process, and requires that background checks comply with a uniform national standard. I-591 is supported by CCRKBA, plus the Washington Arms Collectors, Hunters Heritage Council and Washington State Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors Association.
In addition, Fascitelli also cautioned Hester that “we would advise the Mayor NOT to do…a gun buy back (sic) program..they haven’t been proven to work and can have embarrassing results.”
In that, Fascitelli was prescient because McGinn’s office did put together a gun buyback in late January, about six weeks after the Newtown massacre, and it turned into a circus. Conducted in a parking lot under a freeway overpass – a scenario that was ridiculed locally for being exactly the kind of gun transaction that anti-gunners disdain – the buyback attracted several gun rights activists who offered cold cash rather than gift cards for firearms.
Hester responded to Fascitelli’s June 6 e-mail, noting that, “We were intrigued and interested by a few of the Ceasefire solutions you shared.”
Also in the records packet provided by the mayor’s office to CCRKBA was an opinion piece authored by Fascitelli that also went after the state’s preemption law. In that piece, Fascitelli complained that “The law of preemption is preventing the City of Seattle from implementing a number of things to stem the epidemic of gun violence that is killing our youth and citizens.” Among them was a desire to ban guns in city parks and buildings “despite the fact that there have been shootings at two recent Folklife festivals.”
What Fascitelli neglected to explain was that the most recent of these incidents began away from the actual festival and appears to have been ignited by a disagreement and assault with a skateboard prior to shots being fired.
The first incident was in 2008, when two men began scuffling and one was armed. A shot was fired that struck three people.
Another issue he addressed in the opinion piece was how state preemption prevented Seattle from imposing magazine capacity limits and banning so-called “semi-automatic assault weapons.”
CCRKBA staffers are going through hundreds of pages of documents and e-mails recently provided by the Mayor’s office after CCRKBA’s sister organization, the Second Amendment Foundation, sued over an earlier Public Records Act request that SAF contended had only been partly satisfied.
