By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Evergreen State Second Amendment activists had plenty of reason to celebrate the unanimous win at the state Supreme Court against an illegal gun control ordinance adopted four years ago by the City of Edmonds, but now there is an additional reason for gun owners to grin.
This ruling was a direct defeat for anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, which had, by its own acknowledgement, “agreed to represent the City on a pro bono basis, along with the Summit Law Group.” Summit is a Seattle-based law firm.
It also was a major setback for a Seattle-based gun prohibition lobbying group which has the preemption law in its legislative crosshairs, and will likely ramp up their fight in 2023.
For those who didn’t realize this direct link to Everytown, the debate among readers of a piece in MyEdmondsNews.com provided a link worth reading.
The story is headlined “State Supreme Court deals final blow to Edmonds gun control ordinance.” At the end of the story, Edmonds Mayor Mike Nelson is quoted, declaring, “Every day, grown adults leave their loaded firearms laying around their homes for their young children and grandchildren to see and use with tragic results…Protecting the health and safety of our residents is the most important function of local government. Our city will continue to pursue all means necessary to protect our children and residents from gun violence.”
Among grassroots gun rights activists, the “Doing it for the kids” claim is often seen as an argument when there is no justifiable reason to have done something. One respondent to the story asked an interesting question: “How many people have been hurt by unsafely stored guns in Edmonds?” The writer followed up with, “How many Edmonds residents have died in traffic accidents? More than unsafely stored guns I am sure, where is the special Edmonds laws to prevent those? Want to talk barbaric. How about drug overdose deaths I am sure there are more of those also what special laws does Edmonds have to prevent those?”
Everytown doesn’t say how much it spent supporting the Edmonds case. On the other side, the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association partnered to support the litigation.
Surprisingly, the state Attorney General’s office was not a participant, even though it was clear to every court level the city had violated the state’s 38-year-old model preemption law. That may be a good question to ask Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a perennial anti-gunner who supported legislation to ban so-called “assault weapons” and original capacity ammunition magazines.
Big money gun control supporters will gather this week for the annual fund raising luncheon held by the Seattle-based—and billionaire-backed—Alliance for Gun Responsibility, an Everytown clone that bankrolled two restrictive gun control initiatives in 2014 and 2018 (Initiatives 594 and 1639, respectively) that were pushed through with promises they would reduce violent crime. One look at the annual FBI Uniform Crime Reports suggest neither measure has lived up to forecasts.
In 2015, according to the FBI data, Washington experienced 209 murders including 141 involving firearms. In 2020—the most recent year for which data is available—Washington reported 298 slayings, including 177 involving guns. There is little doubt Washington gun prohibitionists will double down on their efforts to repeal state preemption following this embarrassing Supreme Court defeat. There are no conservatives on the state high court, so this was a unanimous ruling signed by all nine justices, and written by Chief Justice Steven C. González.
