Examiner – by Dave WorkmanWithin hours of yesterday’s announcement that Washington State gun rights leaders weremounting a defense against a big-money gun control initiative launched last week, the well-funded Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR) was crying foul in a blanket e-mail appealing for more money to pad its $1 million-plus war chest.
In the process, to the amusement of local rights advocates, the e-mail demonized and blamed the National Rifle Association for the counter-attack, and so far, the NRA hasn’t uttered a peep publicly about the initiative, nor has it announced any financial backing.
One might reasonably imagine that NRA officials are sitting in their offices, scratching their heads and wondering aloud, “What the heck are these guys talking about?”
As things currently stand, it is a bum rap. It will not impress readers of the Seattle Times, it appears.
The message, sent by WAGR’s Zach Silk, declared, “we knew that Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s leadership, and their local affiliates were going to do everything they could to stop us. We knew they would scare folks and trick them into opposing a measure that a whopping 85% of gun owners support.” He further complained that the gun rights effort is the handiwork of “a bunch of gun lobbyists.”
Perhaps a member of the Northwest Firearms forum put it best: “I’m pretty sure that this falls into Alinky’s (sic) Rule #13: ‘Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.’ Besides, the NRA is the bogeyman that the left scares their children with at bed time.”
Saul Alinsky was a far left radical and “community organizer” who set down rules for what amounted to waging class warfare.
WAGR’s alarm that the firearms community has pledged up to $400,000 seems ironic barely a week after it launched its own initiative campaign with a kickoff event that amassed more than twice that much and now has more than $1 million in the bank. It is rather like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson whining about being bullied by a couple of fourth-graders, one activist suggested.
Backed by wealthy Seattle venture capitalist Nick Hanauer (with strong hints that billionaire anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will also offer financial support), WAGR has made it clear for months that it was planning an initiative. When discussions about gun legislation involving Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms broke down in February, it was as if those talks were doomed from the outset because the gun prohibition lobby was chomping at the bit to essentially buy an election, the gun rights leader reflected yesterday.
It is now clear to many in the firearms community that WAGR thought it was going to enjoy bought-and-paid-for victory. Expecting Northwest gun owners to roll over in the face of adversity is at best delusional, as members of Wa-Guns, Seattle Guns and Hunting-Washington would attest.
Silk’s lament continues, “It’s you against the NRA. And, just to be clear, they’re not putting up a token fight. Their local affiliate told the press that our background checks initiative ‘is the Alamo’ for them. They’re going to fight us — hard.”
He also alludes to strong support among Washington voters for “simple criminal background checks.” A look at the text of I-591 is a study in simplicity: “It is unlawful for any government agency to require background checks on the recipient of a firearm unless a uniform national standard is required.”
What is simpler than complying with a national standard, as the current background check system does? Washington Arms Collectors President John Rodabaugh, an attorney and licensed firearms dealer, told the Seattle Times that I-591 – filed quietly more than a month ago in anticipation of WAGR’s much better bankrolled I-594 – is “a half-page of clear language.” WAGR’s measure spans 15 pages, and as happened with the 1997 gun control initiative, Rodabaugh, Gottlieb and others suggest that the “devil is in the details.”
That may explain the other tenet of I-591, a simple provision that “It is unlawful for any government agency to confiscate guns or other firearms from citizens without due process.”
Nobody has suggested that the WAGR measure includes gun confiscation, but based on experiences in California, New Jersey and New York, Second Amendment activists know that gun control is a strategy of incrementalism. They recall the attempt by anti-gun State Senators Adam Kline, Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Ed Murray earlier this year to push a semi-auto ban that included a provision for unscheduled, warrantless searches of gun owner homes by sheriff’s deputies. Revelation of that tenet caused an uproar and effectively killed the legislation.
Now WAGR, with its deep pockets, is anguished that local grassroots firearms organizations and gun owners are fighting back, and with some overtones of desperation, the gun control group has launched an attack on the NRA, which so far isn’t even involved. If the NRA does join this fray now, in the interests of a Washington membership some people speculate exceeds 100,000 gun owners, guess whose fault that will be?
http://www.examiner.com/article/gun-control-goliath-cries-fowl-as-david-fights-back