Right when we thought that Mayor Nickels of Seattle had abandoned his plan to take matters into his own hands by imposing an illegal gun ban on City property, the Mayor's office indicated that he plans to proceed with his edict (that means no vote on the issue even for his own City Council members).
"The Seattle Weekly’s “daily” blog disclosed Tuesday morning that the mayor – a charter member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the anti-gun group organized by New York’s Michael Bloomberg and Boston’s Thomas Menino – plans to push forward with the ban, even though he has been sternly advised by State attorney General Rob McKenna that such a ban would be illegal under long-standing state statute....
In our judgment, a city does not have the authority to generally prohibit the possession of firearms on city property except to the extent authorized by RCW 9.41.290. Even in the case of criminal trespass, a member of the public is only required to comply with “lawful conditions”. RCW 9A.52.090(2). Prohibiting possession of firearms on city property would not be a lawful condition, because RCW 9.41.290 preempts the power of a city to impose such a prohibition."
In the Examiner.com article, Mr. Workman states, "Washington State’s model preemption law dates back more than two decades. It has been copied by several other state legislatures that took away the power of local politicians to set their own gun laws. The reason that was done is to prevent a patchwork of often conflicting local ordinances from interfering with the rights of firearms owners who would find themselves in violation of one law or another simply by crossing from one city’s border to another."
A public hearing occurred at Seattle City Hall; the Mayor did not bother to attend. Since the DC v Heller decision last summer, restrictions that violate citizens' ability to protect their homes and families from violence have been the subject of litigation all over the United States. Gun prohibitions are continuing to fall as the Second Amendment Foundation and other citizen's groups take aim at big government's incursions against our liberties and individual rights.
All of the above referenced facts raise the issue of whether ideologues like Mayor Nickels and his big government lobbying organization, the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, are threatening to violate laws like the Washington State preemption statute in order to show their contempt for the majority in District of Columbia v. Dick Anthony Heller. Or are they simply trying to distract constituents from their own incompetence engendered by statist policies? Several of the big city mayors have already challenged pereemption laws that are similar to RCW 9.41.290 and the courts have shot them down every time.
As Workman notes, "Mayor Nickels faces the more specific language in Article 1, Section 24 of the Washington State Constitution." The folks that want to argue the semantical points related to whether the Second Amendment deals with corporate rights or individual rights (i.e., the minority in DC vs Heller) will find no "ambiguities" in Article 1. Section 24.
