Alan Gottlieb
By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
Seattle City Council President Tim Burgess has proposed new gun control legislation that would impose a $25 tax on every firearm sale, and five cents for every cartridge sold in the city, but the plan might not be legal, according to the head of a major Washington State-based gun rights organization.
The proposal is reminiscent of a 2012 push in Cook County, Ill. There, County Board President Toni Preckwinkle proposed what became known as a “violence tax” with the same rates, $25 per gun and five cents per round. Eventually, the tax proposal on ammunition was dropped but the tax on guns was pushed through, resulting in a lawsuit.
Under the Seattle proposal, reported by the Seattle Times, there would also be a fine of up to $500 for not reporting the loss or theft of a firearm to police.
Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation told TGM that the city is once again risking a court challenge on state preemption. The last time this happened, the city lost a three-year legal battle against SAF, the National Rifle Association, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Washington Arms Collectors and five individual plaintiffs.
Tim Burgess, Seattle Council President
Burgess told the Seattle Times that his idea had been “vetted” by the city’s legal department and by private attorneys who represent the city pro bono. But that’s the same thing that happened last time the city challenged state preemption, and Seattle lost.
The proposal may be illegal under Washington State’s 32-year-old preemption statute, which notes, “The state of Washington hereby fully occupies and preempts the entire field of firearms regulation within the boundaries of the state, including the registration, licensing, possession, purchase, sale, acquisition, transfer, discharge, and transportation of firearms, or any other element relating to firearms or parts thereof, including ammunition and reloader components.”
The earlier case involved an attempt, started by then-Mayor Greg Nickels in 2009, to ban firearms in city park facilities. SAF and CCRKBA both warned the city that if the plan was implemented, even as an administrative rule, they would file a lawsuit. Days after Nickels announced the ban a lawsuit was filed in King County Superior Court, where the plaintiffs prevailed.
The city appealed, and lost again in a unanimous ruling by the state court of appeals. The state Supreme Court declined to review the case, thus allowing Seattle’s loss stand, but also strengthening the preemption law in the process.
There was much at stake in that case, which was a challenge to state preemption, not just as a law in Washington, but as an idea that had swept the country. Washington’s law, first passed in 1983 and strengthened in 1985, became a model for similar measures in other states. By toppling, or at least weakening the Evergreen State statute, the door might have been open for similar challenges in other states.
The lawsuit may have also contributed in a small way to Nickels’ loss in the primary election that year in a three-way race. Seattle gun owners definitely were not in his camp, and he was ultimately replaced by equally-anti-gun Mike McGinn, who pursued the city’s effort. It was under McGinn that the court rulings came down.
