Couple days late here. My work schedule these days is... weird.
This time Joe forwards an NRA Alrt for WA, with added commentary at the beginning.
All I'll add is that, if we defeat these draconian laws we can expect to see them or similar as ballot initiatives.
***
FROM: GOAL WA <
goalwa@cox.net>
TO: undisclosed recipients
SENT: Sun 1/22/2017 5:50 AM
SUBJECT: GOAL ALERT 2017-1 22 Jan 2017
I am taking the liberty of forwarding this message from
NRA-ILA to all GOAL listers. It contains the best and most thorough explanation
I have seen of the breadth and impact of Attorney General Ferguson’s proposed “assault
weapon/large capacity magazine” ban and/or registration legislation.
Don’t look to the past and recall the 1994
Clinton/Feinstein federal gun ban. That was a joke – a “ban” that banned
nothing already in existence, and was so poorly worded that it opened the door
to widespread and easy evasion. This one is for real. It not only eviscerates
the 2nd Amendment, it does a fair job on the 4th and 5th
Amendments as well.
As we look at the elevation of Donald Trump to the
presidency and the commitments that he made on the campaign trail to protect
the 2nd Amendment, let us remember that almost all gun control laws
on the books come at the state level. And as my mother would have said, “this
one is a doozy.”
If you have never been politically active before, THIS is
the time to start. This is the time to communicate with your elected officials
– by e-mail, by telephone (remember the toll-free legislative hotline
(800-562-6000 and TDD 800-635-9993), by old-fashioned
snail mail – and let them know in polite but firm terms that these bills (HB
1134, SB 5050 and HB 1387 (no Senate version bill number yet) SB are totally
unacceptable and infringe on and impair the US and state constitutional
protections of the right to keep and bear arms.
This is the time, too, to plan a day to visit the Capitol
Campus and speak directly with the people YOU sent to Olympia to represent you.
In all likelihood, in the next two weeks a day will be scheduled when multiple
gun bills are heard – a great opportunity to put grassroots lobbying (YOU) to
work. Yes, most of us have to work for a living, and have to take time off to
visit Olympia. How much are your 2^nd Amendment rights worth to you? The other
side rents buses and cleans out downtown Seattle to give freeloaders a free
ride. Are they more committed that we are? I’ll try and get another alert out
when “gun bill day” is scheduled.
Alert: WA State Proposes Draconian Gun Ban Bills
Friday, January 13, 2017 Alert: WA State Proposes
Draconian Gun Ban Bills
Inspired, perhaps, by Oscar Wilde (“Moderation is a fatal
thing. Nothing succeeds like excess”), Washington State Attorney General Bob
Ferguson has announced two new sweeping gun control bills, with Sen. David
Frockt (D-Seattle) and Rep. Strom Peterson (D-Edmonds) as the bill’s prime
sponsors.
Despite being described as “assault weapon reform,” the
proposed legislation is nothing short of a ban of many common, legal firearms and
“large-capacity magazines” currently possessed by millions of law-abiding
Americans for self-defense, hunting, and recreational shooting.
Both bills use the same extensive definitions of “assault
weapon” and “large-capacity magazine” (LCM). “Assault weapon” would include:
·
a semiautomatic rifle using a detachable
magazine and with one or more of the listed six features (e.g., folding or
telescoping stock, thumbhole stock),
·
a semiautomatic handgun or a semiautomatic,
centerfire, or rimfire rifle with a fixed magazine that can hold more than ten
rounds,
·
a semiautomatic, centerfire, or rimfire rifle
with overall length of less than 30 inches,
·
a semiautomatic handgun using a detachable
magazine and with one of the listed four features, and
·
a shotgun with a revolving cylinder or certain
semiautomatic shotguns.
The bills exclude “any firearm that is manually operated
by bolt, pump, lever, or slide action,” “antique” firearms, and any gun that
has been made permanently inoperable.
An LCM is defined as “any ammunition feeding device with
the capacity to accept more than ten rounds,” or “any conversion kit, part, or
combination of parts, from which such a device can be assembled” if the parts
are in the possession or control of the same person, but excludes a tubular
magazine contained in a lever-action firearm and a .22 caliber tube ammunition
feeding device.
The first bill prohibits all possession, purchase, sale
or transfer of an “assault weapon” or LCM, except as permitted. (“Transfer”
already has a special definition in Washington law, and means any “intended
delivery of a firearm to another person without consideration of payment or
promise of payment including, but not limited to, gifts and loans.”) The
exceptions for other than law enforcement personnel or licensed dealers include
persons who legally possess such items when the law takes effect, and persons
who become owners through inheritance or other operation of law, provided these
owners can “establish such provenance.” Once grandfathered, owners are
themselves prohibited from selling or transferring the item, other than to a
licensed dealer or by way of permanent relinquishment to law enforcement. Guns
and magazines relinquished to law enforcement “must be destroyed.” These bills
have less to do with “meaningful reforms” for public safety and reducing crime
(other than the newly defined crimes of being gun owners) than they do with
moving the incremental process of stigmatizing guns and eliminating firearm
possession by law-abiding citizens another giant step forward in Washington
State.
The bill also imposes a storage requirement on
grandfathered owners as a condition of continued lawful possession. The
“assault weapon” or LCM must be kept in a safe, gun safe, lock box or other
device that can be locked and constructed of workmanship and material such
“that it cannot be pried open or easily removed or defeated.”
The second bill proposes a marginally less extreme
alternative. First, it would impose a registration-licensing system for
“assault weapons” and LCMs. Every person who possesses, transports,
manufactures, purchases or sells an “assault weapon” or LCM must have an annual
state-issued license, with an updated license required every time there is a
change in possession of the gun or LCM. The licensing requirement has a delay
period (until 2020) before it applies to persons who currently possess such
items, but these persons would be prohibited from selling or transferring the
gun or LCM to anyone other than a licensed dealer, a gunsmith, or to law
enforcement for permanent relinquishment.
Like the first bill, this bill mandates that relinquished
guns and LCMs “must be destroyed.”
Licenses would not be available to persons under 21 years
of age.
Applicants would have to show proof of completing the
specific kind of comprehensive training, and provide a statement that he or she
will only use the gun or LCM for the specified “lawful” purposes and will
always use “safe gun storage” when the "assault weapon" or LCM is not
in the person’s “immediate possession.” The license applicant must provide a
“full description” of both the lawful purpose for which the assault weapon or
LCM is sought and the “safe gun storage” the applicant will use. The
application also requires a minimum $50 fee, detailed personal information,
detailed information about the weapon or LCM, fingerprinting, and a state
database/NICS check. The bill also imposes a “great care” standard for
licensees, in which the licensee must keep the assault weapon unloaded, within
“secure gun storage,” when it is not in the licensee’s immediate possession.
Licensed dealers would be prohibited from selling or
delivering an "assault weapon" or LCM to any person who does not have
a state-issued license. Even with licensees, the bill would require the dealer
to keep records of every transaction, to be submitted to local law enforcement.
Further, because Washington State has a private
background check requirement that applies to sales and “transfers” of firearms,
the dealer performing a background check on a non-sale private “transfer” of an
"assault weapon" is prohibited from “facilitating the transfer” if
the parties lack the necessary licenses. Residents of other states would be prohibited
from purchasing rifles and shotguns in Washington if the firearm comes within
the definition of “assault weapon.”
And if all this wasn’t enough, the penalties for
violations of these bills are staggering. Under the first bill, any violations
are Class C felonies, as are violations of the licensing or the “great care” requirements
in the second bill. Class C felonies are punishable by five years’
imprisonment, a fine of $10,000, or both the imprisonment and the fine.
According to a news report, the goal is to pass the
“assault weapons” ban, with the second bill being the fall-back or alternative.
Predictably, these measures are being characterized as “common-sense solutions”
to prevent "gun violence".
As we’ve pointed out before, bans of “assault weapons”
tend to be an arbitrary categorization of certain firearms based on the
presence of designated features. These bans are unrelated to the likelihood of
such guns being used in crime or in a mass shooting event. A study that
Congress required on the impact of the federal assault weapons and LCM ban,
which expired in 2004, “concluded that ‘the banned weapons and magazines were
never used in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders’ even before the
ban, and that the law’s 10-round limit on new ammunition magazines wasn’t a
factor in multiple-victim or multiple-wound crimes.” Similarly, state-level
data suggests there is no indication that "assault weapon" and LCM
bans reduce violent crime.
Despite being described as “assault weapon reform,” the
proposed legislation is nothing short of a ban of many common, legal firearms
and “large-capacity magazines” currently possessed by millions of law-abiding
Americans for self-defense, hunting, and recreational shooting.
Moreover, based on a survey released a few days ago by
the Pew Research Center, restrictions on "assault weapons" are not
supported by the law enforcement community. The survey found that even though
almost all (86%) of the officers describe their job as more difficult now than
previously and that their department lacked enough officers to adequately
patrol their community, only about a third of officers (32%) expressed support
for a ban on "assault weapons" (and an overwhelming majority of the
police officers, 74%, agreed that it was more important to protect the rights
of Americans to own guns than it was to control gun ownership).
Sadly, these bills follow the recent tradition of
Washington State’s poorly drafted gun control initiatives and misinformation in
how these are portrayed to the public. The 2014 background check initiative,
I-594, was peddled as one that required background checks “on all gun sales,”
to prohibit “dangerous people” from buying guns. In reality, the legislation
went far beyond regulating sales and covers almost all gifts, loans, and other
“transfers” of a firearm, meaning that any situation in which a firearm
temporarily changes hands is a potential violation of the law. Another
Washington initiative, I-1491, on “extreme risk protection orders,” was
described as a “temporary” suspension of a person’s access to firearms if there
was “documented evidence” that the person may be dangerous. The actual text of
the measure, however, authorizes court orders that ban possession or access to
guns for a minimum of one year – which orders are renewable indefinitely –
without any requirement for evidence by an expert or medical practitioner
regarding the person’s mental health or propensity towards violence.
Oddly, given the stated goal of the legislation, it does
nothing to require a mental health follow-up or treatment for a person who is
placed under such an order. And while the professed justification for passing
such gun laws has been the need to save lives by keeping firearms out of the
hands of criminals and other dangerous people, there’s little to show that
there’s been any appreciable impact on public safety because of these
restrictions.
Consistent with this pattern, though, we expect to see
the drastic regulatory scope and reach of the new bills downplayed, with correspondingly
big claims about their value in reducing gun violence. Already, Attorney
General Bob Ferguson’s press release states, about the first bill, that “[t]he
legislation covers only sales, thereby grandfathering current gun ownership,”
adding that the “ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines applies to
magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.” In fact, the
plain language of the bill clearly prohibits, besides sales, the possession and
“transfers” (gifts and loans) of guns and LCMs. Likewise, the licensing and
registration regime is entirely omitted in the description of the second bill,
which is referred to as “enhancing background checks and raising the minimum
age required to buy” assault weapons and LCMs. Nowhere is there a mention of
the dire penalties.
These bills have less to do with “meaningful reforms” for
public safety and reducing crime (other than the newly defined crimes of being
gun owners) than they do with moving the incremental process of stigmatizing
guns and eliminating firearm possession by law-abiding citizens another giant
step forward in Washington State.
Washington NRA members and Second Amendment supporters
are encouraged to click the "Take Action" button above to contact
their state legislators in opposition to these anti-gun bills, SB 5050, HB 1134
and HB 1187.
------------------------------------
Posted by: GOAL WA <
goalwa@cox.net>
