Seattle Mayor Ed Murray wants to destroy used police sidearms, but the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says it is a waste of public property. (dave Workman photo)
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
A decision to destroy used Seattle Police Department guns rather than sell them to an out-of-state wholesaler has come under heavy criticism from a leading gun rights organization whose national headquarters is in nearby Bellevue.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms called the plan a waste of taxpayers’ money for political correctness. When a reporter challenged anti-gun Seattle Mayor Ed Murray to show any evidence that guns sold in the past have subsequently been involved in local crimes, he couldn’t.
Instead, Murray fell back on a popular anti-gun argument: “You know, there’s just too many guns getting into the wrong hands.”
But CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb declared in a statement to TGM and other news agencies that Murray is “a gun-hating extremist who is using his political position to wage war against firearms and the people who own them.”
When Murray was a state senator, he co-sponsored legislation to ban so-called “assault weapons.” One tenet of that bill would have empowered sheriff’s deputies to enter private homes without a warrant to determine that owners of such firearms were storing them safely. When that story was reported, the sponsors were embarrassed and the bill went away.
CCRKBA’s sister organization, the Second Amendment Foundation, is presently involved in a major lawsuit against Seattle’s so-called “gun violence” tax. Its co-plaintiffs are the National Rifle Association and National Shooting Sports Foundation – a first for all three groups to be involved in the same lawsuit as full partners – along with two local gun shops.
Gottlieb’s criticism of Murray addressed the fiscal irresponsibility of sacrificing up to $30,000 annually on what is essentially a worthless bit of anti-gun theatrics. That money could be used to buy equipment for the police department, but Murray’s justification is that if it saves one life, it’s worth the cost.
“If Murray were in private business and he arbitrarily decided to destroy valuable property because of his personal prejudices,” Gottlieb asserted, “he would be fired on the spot…It is especially egregious because he knows this is not going to prevent a single crime.”
When Murray, on camera with Seattle’s KIRO-TV News, could not answer questions about whether former police guns had been involved in crimes, Gottlieb released a statement asserting, “Dodging the question with platitudes is typical of gun prohibitionists who can’t logically justify their actions, or reasonably explain their dislike of firearms.”
