Ralph Fascitelli
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
The head of Washington State’s most vocal gun control organization admitted during a recent interview with Seattle’s KVI radio that the killing spree in Santa Barbara, Calif., couldn’t have been prevented by any gun control law.
Ralph Fascitelli, president of Washington CeaseFire, admitted to KVI’s John Carlson that, “California has some of the strictest laws in the country on gun violence. I don’t think that there’s any law that would have prevented the tragedy in Santa Barbara.”
Yet Fascitelli’s organization – while not sponsoring the measure – appears to be supporting Initiative 594 launched by the Seattle-based Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR), an 18-month-old, and well-financed group formed to press for so-called “universal background checks.”
I-594 is an 18-page gun control measure that is opposed by the National Rifle Association, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and several other gun rights groups. CCRKBA is part of a broad coalition pushing an alternative measure, Initiative 591, which requires any background checks done in the state to comply with a uniform national standard. It also prohibits government gun confiscation without due process.
California imposes a “universal background check” for all gun transactions. In the days following the Isla Vista slayings—in which three people were fatally stabbed and three others were gunned down by a 22-year-old man who then took his own life after trading shots with local sheriff’s deputies—gun rights activists in the Pacific Northwest have repeatedly noted that I-594’s proposal mirrors existing California law. It did not prevent the killings, as proponents have been intimating it might.
At least three times during the discussion on KVI, Fascitelli reaffirmed that, “I don’t think there are any laws that would have prevented the tragedy in Santa Barbara.”
The admission could come back to haunt gun prohibitionists backing the gun control initiative in the fall. Both I-594 and I-591 will be on the November ballot.
While he acknowledged that tough gun laws could not stop the killings, Fascitelli maintained that Washington should adopt tougher gun laws. Among his proposals was elimination of the state’s model “shall issue” concealed carry law and replacing it with an arbitrary “may issue” scheme under which police could refuse to issue a concealed pistol license arbitrarily.
There is no indication that the Santa Barbara alleged killer Elliot Rodger, who comes from a liberal family that supported gun control, had ever applied for a carry permit in California. Legal concealed carry had nothing to do with the slayings.
More than 458,000 Washingtonians have active CPLs, according to the state Department of Licensing.
Under the process Fascitelli envisions, police would interview members of a CPL applicant’s family to determine whether that person should be issued a license.
Fascitelli did say that more needs to be done with mental health. The killer left behind a 140-page autobiographical “manifesto” in which he detailed his hatred toward young women who rejected his attention, and toward the men they wound up dating. He revealed hatred for his parents for not providing him with a happier, wealthier lifestyle. He played the lottery in hopes of winning a fortune, thus making him more attractive to women, whom he essentially considered sex objects.
Rodger also wrote about buying the three handguns legally, and of his first trip to a gun range, where he became almost physically sick at handling a pistol.
