Seattle mayor Greg Nickels today willfully, knowingly, and illegally ordered city departments to violate the rights of Washingtonians, as expressed and defended explicitly in state law.
Nickels knows full well that his new executive order banning all guns on city-owned property violates RCW 9.41.290:
The state of Washington hereby fully occupies and preempts the entire field of firearms regulation within the boundaries of the state, including the registration, licensing, possession, purchase, sale, acquisition, transfer, discharge, and transportation of firearms ... Local laws and ordinances that are inconsistent with, more restrictive than, or exceed the requirements of state law shall not be enacted and are preempted and repealed, regardless of the nature of the code, charter, or home rule status of such city, town, county, or municipality.
Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske supported Nickels' illegal act. Both of them should resign for their blatant disregard of civil rights and state law. The job of both offices is to protect the rights and uphold laws of the people. If you can't do that, then you shouldn't be there.
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
Posted by pudge at June 09, 2008 08:18 PM | Email ThisBush signed the McCain Feingold despite his Bushes own beleifs that it violated the constitution.
You can call it a non sequiter, I will call it a test in hypocracy. Lets see how Pudge does. My guess is that he will not respond. He has a habit of ignoring my questions because they always seem to expose his partisan hypocracy.
-> He's assaulting Gaia in the process, book him.
Posted by: Al on June 9, 2008 08:50 PMIn all fairness to #4, McCain-Feingold should have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Wny it wasn't is beyond me.
With that said, I still support John McCain, because he believes in capitalism and the free-market system. Obama will strangle us in regulation, raise taxes and expand government control for a collectivist state - Marx and Lenin would be proud.
Posted by: KS on June 9, 2008 08:56 PMSo seems like Nickles should not just resign:
He should be charged with violating state law.
At the very least above language in the RCW seems like it AUTOMATICALLY makes the proposed Seattle ordinance null and void on its face. If they try and enforce it, somebody ought to carry a cased shotgun or 30-30 across city propery; and then sue the pants off Seattle if anybody dares try to arrest them.
Posted by: Methow Ken on June 9, 2008 09:15 PMCome try and take it away!
Posted by: eastsider on June 9, 2008 09:16 PMThis is normally fine -- say, an executive order requiring every city employee to shower before work -- unless it oversteps legislative authority, and in this case, it clearly and obviously does.
At best, the executive order would allow city employees to demand that anyone carrying a firearm leave the city park or other public land. If the person refuses to leave after being asked to leave, then they could be arrested for trespassing.
This would work perfectly. It isn't any more illegal to have a firearm on city property, than it was before. If someone takes out their firearm, and shoots it or threatens people with it, then a city employee can ask them to leave. If the employee is observant and quick enough to ask them to leave before someone is actually hurt with the firearm, then it is even possible that actual violence will be prevented.
Posted by: Richard Pope on June 9, 2008 09:24 PMARTICLE V. Executive Department
Sec. 10. REMOVAL OF MAYOR
The Mayor may be removed from office after a hearing, for any willful violation of duty, or for the commission of an offense involving moral turpitude, upon written notice from the City Council at least five days before the hearing. He or she shall have the right to be present, to the aid of counsel, to offer evidence and to be heard in his or her own behalf. Upon the affirmative vote of two-thirds of all the members of the City Council, acting as a court of impeachment,the office shall become vacant.
So, instead of a random distribution of people with guns in parks, we'll chase off the law-abiding, the non-protestors, the city employees off-duty (police etc.), and expect the remaining mix of gangs, police, protestors, and mental cases to be less volatile?
Civilized self-policing and deterrence sort of goes out the window when you deliberately skew the mix of armed people to the point that none of the criminals have the slightest thing to fear. cf. school shootings.
Posted by: Al on June 9, 2008 09:35 PMHow about instead we make a law that says Richard Pope can't post on soundpolitics.com. It won't be any more illegal for him to post here than it was before, but if he posts something that we find offensive, then we can arrest him for that.
Richard: it is ALREADY illegal to shoot, or threaten to shoot, a gun at someone. A city employee does not need this illegal executive order to ask them to leave in that case. So that argument falls flat.
That leaves only the "taking out." But taking out a gun on public property is a protected act. You can't forbid it, and you can't order someone to leave city property for it. That's an illegal violation of our rights.
If you don't like it, then simply change the law that says we can't do it. But don't break the law just because you don't like the law.
I am seeing more every day why you switched to the Democratic Party: you don't respect the rights of the people any more than they do.
My posting at # 11 was meant to be SARCASTIC.
Here is some more sarcasm:
The University of Washington has had a WAC regulation for MANY years which purports to prohibit anyone from carrying a firearm on campus property. WAC 478-124-020.
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=478-124&full=true
Under WAC 478-124-030, faculty, staff and students who violate the firearm prohibition can be disciplined, up to and including termination of employment or expulsion from school. Members of the general public who violate the firearm prohibition can be asked to leave campus premises by a uniformed police officer.
Unfortunately, the UW doesn't enforce this regulation very effectively. For one thing, no notice is provided to anyone (such as signs with a circled handgun with a slash through it) that firearms are prohibited on campus. Otherwise, armed miscreants might be deterred from entering the campus with their firearms.
Second, if someone is actually spotted with a firearm, it is not always possible to call campus police to have them instructed to leave. For example, on April 2, 2007, a man pulled out a firearm in Gould Hall. A UW employee witnessed this incident, but was unable to call campus police to have the man instructed to leave campus before the man shot her to death with the firearm and then killed himself.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003648679_uwshooting03m.html
Posted by: Richard Pope on June 9, 2008 09:46 PMNot only do you lack any sense of humor, but your analogy is completely misplaced.
Posted by: Richard Pope on June 9, 2008 09:50 PMAnd as to my analogy, no, it's not. It's apt.
APT!!!!!
Posted by: pudge on June 9, 2008 09:58 PMAnyway, I looked up the legislator's bio, and the only college he attended in Utah was a private institution, namely Brigham Young University. I looked up the BYU honor code on its website, and it was strictly prohibited for students to carry firearms on campus, with most severe discipline being promised for this.
BYU is probably one of the safest college campuses to be in the entire country. However, this status probably has very little correlation to the strict anti-firearms rules at BYU.
Posted by: Richard Pope on June 9, 2008 10:01 PMBush 41, after all, was responsible for the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, which made it a federal felony -- punishable by time in a federal penitentiary -- to have any type of firearm within 1,000 feet of any elementary or secondary school (with limited exceptions).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-Free_School_Zones_Act_of_1990
If someone violates Mayor Nickles' silly executive order, they can only be asked to leave the city property. If they refuse to leave, at worst they can be prosecuted for misdemeanor trespass.
The penalty for violating Bush 41's criminal law is MUCH MUCH WORSE. And by the way, after the U.S. Supreme Court said the law was unconstitutional for not emphasizing the Commerce Clause enough, a Republican-controlled Congress in 1997 re-enacted the same law, with more specific language.
Posted by: Richard Pope on June 9, 2008 10:14 PMExcept federal law does forbid those guns to be sold to mentally ill people like the VT shooter, if the state designates him as such.
And automatic weapons are illegal for someone like the VT shooter, as they require a federal background check and license he surely wouldn't have passed, and he'd have to find a very valuable used one to buy, and no new guns are allowed to be manufactured or imported.
And it wasn't an automatic weapon. It does require one trigger pull per round.
And still, no brave young men without weapons stopped him, as he said they would have, if only he had required one trigger pull per round, which he did.
As to the magazines, yes, some of them held 15 rounds, which were illegal under the Assault Weapons Ban. The rest were 10 rounds, which were not. But he had and used multiple magazines, and there's no reason to think that smaller magazine size would have prevented him from doing just as much damage, as he could have just had more magazines. There is very little evidence that a 10-round magazine size prevents criminals from killing.
There's a lot of stupidity out there about guns. As much as some of it comes from the right, FAR more of it comes from the left.
Posted by: pudge on June 9, 2008 10:21 PMHm. First you say my apt analogy is misplaced, and then you bring up a completely useless analogy yourself. You are comparing a difference of opinion on the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment in federal law to a clear and unarguable violation of a state law by a subordinate government entity.
While we could argue that the Gun-Free School Zones Act is unconstitutional -- and I absolutely would, though on Tenth Amendment grounds before Second Amendment grounds -- it's not the same thing. And speaking of the Tenth Amendment, if we're going to call violations of the Constitution crimes grounds for hanging, then FDR is the greatest criminal our country has ever known.
"And by the way, after the U.S. Supreme Court said the law was unconstitutional for not emphasizing the Commerce Clause enough"
Exactly. Tenth Amendment violation.
But again, this all pales in comparison to the Tenth Amendment violations of FDR, and those coming under Obama. Not that Bush 43 wasn't pretty bad on the Tenth Amendment too: NCLB, for example.
So if you want to play this game, feel free. My side will come out far better than yours.
I have not seen an answer yet. How consistant are you? Did you demand Bushs resignation when he signed a bill into law (McCain Feingold) that he himself declared unconstitutional?
If so, how is that enforced?
And did anyone wonder if it was a coincidence that an article about "Open Carry" appeared in our papers at the same time as Mayor NICKELS' executive order was published?
In Washington State it is not necessary to have a concealed weapons permit in order to carry a holstered visible gun around town.
Posted by: Bart Cannon on June 10, 2008 02:20 AMjust remember this Seattle ban when we have the next LA riots, WTO, Katrina or other threat to civil peace and order; gov-mint track record not too good on protecting your family/property in those scenarios; good luck, sheep; nannystate will care for all needs;
fat chance CN, Aussies or Euro will re-instate any gun ownership laws once banned; that's progressive, eh?
Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on June 10, 2008 05:28 AM
This pretty much sums up gun free zones.
Posted by: Andrew Brown on June 10, 2008 07:31 AMMaybe just for once. If you come here to fight about "anything". Know what the heck your talking about.
Everytime you make one of your stupid statements. Everyone here just slaps the heck out of you and it makes you look like a even bigger fool. (not that your not there already)
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on June 10, 2008 08:06 AMIf it isn't burn bans it's bon fire bans or smoking bans or Internet poker in your home bans or now, the 2nd amendment is thwarted by the Mayor and deputy dog Kerlicowardske. Welcome to Seattle where you can get murdered at a Mardi Gras celebration by a group of marauding thugs wielding a skateboard, but can't carry the means in which to protect yourself as outlined in the Constitution.
The only logical next move Mayor turkeyneck is to Ban Skateboards.
He has done more to defend your right to keep and bear arms in this state than you will ever know and he's done it without the ridiculous name calling that permeates this blog.
I hope you'll keep that in mind and instead refer to this as irrational politics, or anti-gun politics, or Nickels politics. You'd do well to not push away the large amount of liberal gun owners in this state. Just look at the Stranger - even those guys are saying this is wrong.
(Reposted from Eric Earling's thread on this same subject for Rick D. and anyone else who wants to start throwing around the 'l' word)
Posted by: Andrew Brown on June 10, 2008 08:11 AMIt is important to note that liberal or conservative plays a HUGE part in this.
"The most active leader of the open carry movement here in Washington identifies himself as a liberal, and is a gay man."
It is true that not all liberals are against guns, though most are. But on the other hand, ALMOST NO conservatives are against guns. Can you find me one who is?
Posted by: pudge on June 10, 2008 09:01 AMAnyone who goes anywhere with the intent to do crime at the end of a gun, robbery, assault, murder etc... is a criminal. They are already premeditating crimes with substantial felony time associated with them. Which of these individuals, before now unconcerned with long jail sentences as a deterrent, will now realize that a trespass charge might be added to their felony and think, "hey maybe it's not a good idea?" Is there a number less than zero?
So who is affected by this rule? People who carry guns legally having been screened to do so by the state/fed government. IE the law abiding.
So in this case a "law abiding" person was the "criminal". If we measure the need to take sweeping action based on individual events does anyone doubt that Nichols should immediately ban sales and consumption of alcohol at any city property? Does anyone doubt that many thousands of percent more people die as a result of DUI accidents after attending events on public property than are shot by concealed carry permit holders? Can anyone think of another concealed carry permit holder crime recently? How many die in accidents simply going to and from these events without booze involvement?
HUNDREDS more lives could be saved by simply banning public gatherings in public spaces. If "someone got hurt" is the filter by which we decide what will pass on public property we can save vastly more people restricting alcohol or even preventing gatherings to begin with. How many people will drown at city/county parks? Can we expect a rule outlawing getting in the water? Why not?
Which of course only focuses the attention back to the reality here. That his is a political move against guns that has no basis in public safety whatsoever and makes no attempt to show any kind of balance between the risk, real and perceived, in relation to the consequence of the rule.
Posted by: Cecil on June 10, 2008 11:22 AMAre you actually going to make the claim that liberals are equally protective of the 2nd amendment as those that self identify as being Conservatives or Libertarians?
You point out (1) exception to the rule and then figure that because he self identifies as a "liberal", therefore all those that self identify as liberals are likewise staunch defenders of the 2nd amendment. That is infantile thinking on its base and doesn't pass the logic test either.
Tell you what Andrew, go to Goldsteins blog and put forth your assertion and see if you aren't laughed out of the room (but not before being called a fascist,gun-toting racist, Hick, etc.
Report back to us your findings, Andrew.
Posted by: Rick D. on June 10, 2008 11:36 AMI, for one, have seen Richard Pope post so much cr@p on these pages over the years that I'm surprised anyone even reads it or comments on it any more.
Posted by: Larry on June 10, 2008 12:05 PMArticle 1 SECTION 24 RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.
Does the new executive order violate our Constitution in any way?
Posted by: SouthernRoots on June 10, 2008 12:30 PMShrug, all you're doing is pointing out a difference between liberal policymakers and liberal media. The point is, of course, that liberal policymakers, in this state and elsewhere, are bent on controlling our lives, and our rights be damned. If it is not the gun issue, then it's another one. The main problem with this is not that it is about guns, but the liberal MINDSET, that your rights DO NOT MATTER if THEY think your rights aren't important.
I think pointing this fact out is good.
swatter: "Must Resign or What?"
You are mistaking my meaning. I am saying they are unfit for duty, not that I have any authority or power to remove them. I don't live in Seattle, so I can't remove them anyway.
"calling for his resignation on a blog is quite trite."
I simply wrote my opinion on a web site, which is no different from Paine writing his opinions in a pamphlet. Well, some of his writings were better than mine, granted (though not his idiotic letter to Washington, which sounds like it could have been written by Goldy), but the triteness level is equivalent. I see no difference whatsoever between writing it here, than writing it in the Seattle Times or saying it on Meet the Press.
Cecil: "Which of course only focuses the attention back to the reality here. That his is a political move against guns that has no basis in public safety whatsoever and makes no attempt to show any kind of balance between the risk, real and perceived, in relation to the consequence of the rule."
So if there WERE a basis in public safety, you would be in favor of his breaking the law and violating our rights? I mean, I agree with where you're coming from on how useless this is, but I am troubled that you say there might be some case where breaking the law and violating our rights is acceptable.
SouthernRoots: that's debatable, which is why I didn't include it in my post. Does your right to bear arms in your defense mean you can carry it on city property? You could make an argument either way, and I don't know the state caselaw on the subject. But it DOES clearly violate the RCWs.
That mindset is unfortunately not limited to liberals, as the 'conservatives' in power now - whatever you want to call them, but that's what they call themselves - do exactly that, just with different rights.
Posted by: Andrew Brown on June 10, 2008 01:49 PMAndrew Brown: yes, the difference being that SOME conservatives do this, and ALMOST ALL liberals do. It is why the Dems won in 2006: Republican VOTERS stopped voting for Republicans who no longer represented them.
Take it someplace else, boys! Your debate is about as productive as "Yes you are!" "No, I'm not!" "Yes you are!" "No, I'm not!" "Yes...."
Posted by: Andrew on June 10, 2008 02:25 PMThey stated that since electronic alarms are usually false, and that police response costs the city a MILLION dollars (harken Dr. Evil) they would no longer respond to false alarms.
That meant it was up to me to protect my property.
My alarm company calls me first if there is a break-in. If I am out and about town, I then respond to the scene with my own weapon, slowing down at red lights. Sounds kind of risky doesn't it?
I think the Mayor is ultimately proposing that firearms can not be transported on any city property. Does that mean that even with my concealed weapons permit that I won't be able to have a registered gun in the trunk of my car?
That could mean I'll need to hide my burglary response gun somewhere in my own yard. A hole in the ground? Tied to a secret rhododendron branch?
Back to the issue of public safety. With multi-millions lost annually to burglary should we add vigilante response to the mess. All to save ONE MILLION DOLLARS ! ? !
And does it really cost us ONE MILLION DOLLARS for cops to respond to burglar alarms? No. They're already on the job.
Let's go back to the old system where a fine was imposed if the home owner's burglar alarm sent a false signal to the police.
Posted by: Bart Cannon on June 10, 2008 03:09 PMNote andrews comments at 44. It brings to question the same thing I asked of you in post #1. I agree Mayor Nickels is wrong for what he has done but I am curious if you agree that Bush was wrong and should have resigned for the same reasons you cite when he signed the McCain Feingold act?
Are you going to continue to ignore the question?
Posted by: Lysander on June 10, 2008 03:52 PMI still think if you CALL for a person to RESIGN, you have to be ready to take action. It's getting summer, there is an election and I am ready. If you want someone to get recall petitions signed, then I am your guy.
Posted by: swatter on June 10, 2008 04:21 PM