Requesting Your Participation
I spent a little time on the phone yesterday with Dave Workman of the Second Amendment Foundation, talking about Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ recently spoken of Executive Order (thanks again, to Ray Carter).
As it currently stands, it looks as though the EO will direct all city employees to demand that people legally carrying their concealed pistols on all city property to leave the property immediately. If the legally carrying person does not leave immediately, they will be charged by the City of Seattle with trespassing. It is a nice little dodge around the pre-emptive state laws, though it makes me sick to my stomach.
The policy is not yet in effect. It is being drawn up by the city’s lawyers and even Nickels doesn’t know when he will be able to sign it.
“Our parks, our community centers and our public events are safer without guns,” Nickels said at a news conference with Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. “At many properties, including City Hall, you can bring a gun if you have a concealed-weapons permit. Under this order, people with concealed weapons will be asked to give up their weapon or leave.”
What a wonderful horrible bit of nanny-statism. Communities are safer without guns, unless those guns are in the hands of city employees, like the police.
Not in my world.
But back to my conversation with Dave Workman.
Both Mr. Workman and I are pretty sure that Nickels will hold a “Town Hall” style meeting to attempt and make it look as though “the community” is behind his decision. Mr. Workman is asking for me to get a list together of folks who would be willing to show up when/if they are needed to thwart Nickels’ circus.
Because of their prior association with Nickels and Police Chief Kerlikowske, the local gun bigot groups will very likely have advanced notice of when the meeting is scheduled. But even in Seattle, they don’t really have the numbers, and that is what will count when the media arrives.
And even if they try and deny the pro-CCW folks attendance to the meeting and push us into the hallway, like what happened in Olympia during the “close the gun show loophole bill” testimony last year, or for those of us unwilling to compromise on our right to carry concealed, keep us outside the building altogether, the more people that can and do show up, the better.
So please, if you live in the greater Seattle/Tacoma/Everett area, and would be willing to exercise your right to speak and be heard by the government, as well as continue to carry concealed in any place not prohibited by state law, look at the top of the right hand column for the RNS email addresses and send me an email.
Or, if you have your own blog, I would like to request of you a post asking any Seattle area locals to please do the same.
You know and I know that if Nickels gets away with this here, that the City of Olympia will follow him down the happy path of ignorance. You can then follow the path of logic that tells you that other cities and townships will follow: Bellingham, Tacoma, Vancouver, even possibly Everett and Spokane, just to name the larger ones.
We need to stop this now.
Thanks and wish us luck.
