Ballot Initiatives & Subverting Preemption, All to Ban Your Gun

By Mark Walters

USA – -(Ammoland.com)- Two Things to Watch

Remember the old saying: “You cannot refuse to accept the situation.”

To do so leaves you vulnerable to whatever it is you are fooling yourself about by refusing to accept it in the first place. That credit card bill? It isn’t going away by ignoring the statement. That medical diagnosis you fear? It isn’t going away by refusing to see a doctor about your symptoms. You get the idea.

To meet whatever challenge you face head on, you must first acknowledge there is a challenge in the first place.

Today, right now, gun owners face many challenges. Two of them stand out above many others when it comes to the other side coming after our rights. One is liberal gun-grabbers turning to liberal courts when they can’t get legislation passed and the second is the exploitation of ballot measures in individual states, the technique favored by notorious and obnoxious former New York City Mayor and mega-billionaire, Michael Bloomberg.

Liberal Judges & Courts

Let me start with the courts. Seattle. Yesterday the Washington State Supreme Court upheld by an 8-1 decision, Seattle’s “gun tax.” City Council member and creator of the gun tax, Tim Burgess, is as giddy as a progressive liberal visiting a Unicorn farm.

From the Seattle Times:

Burgess called the ruling a “huge win” and said he hopes other Washington cities “now feel comfortable to follow suit” by adopting their own taxes on gun sales.

“I’m thrilled to see our Supreme Court so strongly uphold Seattle’s gun-violence tax,” he said in a statement Thursday.

“We knew from the start that we had a strong and sound legal case, and I’m proud that the tax proceeds can continue funding gun safety research and prevention programs at Harborview Medical Center.”

The councilmember added, “Gun violence costs the city and county $180 million per year, and I believe the gun industry should help offset some of those costs.”

The Alliance for Gun Responsibility joined Burgess in hailing the new decision.

“The gun lobby has tried — and failed … to use the courts to block this commonsense policy that will fund these critical investments,” the Alliance said in a statement.

“Today’s ruling is a clear message that their campaign to deny the public factual information about gun violence is not welcome in Washington state.”

On the other side Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation said,

“The high court’s decision to uphold what clearly appears to us as a violation” of Washington’s law barring cities from regulating firearms “is proof positive that the court places political correctness above the rule of law,” executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said. “Gun owners must get more involved in Supreme Court races.”

Gottlieb called the ruling “a loss for the rule of law, firearms dealers and gun owners living in Seattle” and also “a slap in the face to the Washington Legislature.”

To put this in perspective, Seattle enacts the gun tax; gun dealers leave the city and gun buyers go elsewhere to avoid paying the tax. Projected tax revenue fails to materialize, and we’re right back to square one. Absolutely nothing is accomplished other than causing headaches to law-abiding gun owners and dealers, which is the purpose of the tax, to begin with, another way of enacting a de facto ban.

Unfortunately, the gun grabbers prevailed in court using the argument that it isn’t a violation of state preemption of gun regulations but merely a tax.

Both sides know better, and so did the liberal court. Expect to see more of these shenanigans in other progressive arena’s by other liberal city councils who were watching this, especially in other rights challenged Washington State municipalities. As Mr. Gottlieb says frequently on my radio programs, “Black robes matter.”

Ballot Initiatives

Moving over to the ballot initiative fight, is Bloomberg coming to your state with his phony “expanded background check” initiatives?

He may very well be if you live in one of the following places: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Maryland Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, DC.

Of course, he already succeeded with his expanded checks in Washington State and Oregon dropped to her knees willfully and enacted their bill without his help. Nevada fell with less than one percent of the vote in 2016, but the initiative will probably never see the light of day due to fatal flaws in its implementation. Arizona is widely expected to be next in Bloomberg’s crosshairs, and Florida will more than likely follow if his strategy of picking off a few gun friendly states is to be continued. All signs are that he will follow through.

Do you have reason to be concerned? Short answer? Damn right you do, especially if you live in a state that allows your legislative process to be circumvented by a certain number of signatures that will put an anti-rights measure on your ballot.

Believe me when I tell you, most of your state’s residents aren’t near as savvy as you are. In fact, there are more than enough “lowest common denominators” who will sign anything handed to them, particularly when they are being lied to by the highly paid and slick Bloomberg employee telling the lies and gathering the signatures.

Unless your state has done what Arizona did by enacting preemptive measures to make the process difficult for those Bloomberg pied pipers, you had better be paying careful attention as we move to 2018.

About Mark Walters

Mark Walters is the host of two nationally syndicated radio broadcasts, Armed American Radio and Armed American Radio’s Daily Defense with Mark Walters. He is the Second Amendment Foundations 2015 Gun Rights Defender of the Year award recipient and co-author of two books, Lessons from Armed America with Kathy Jackson (Whitefeather Press) and Lessons from UnArmed America with Rob Pincus (Whitefeather Press)