Washington state saw victory this week for
Initiative 594, which impose tougher background check
requirements on gun purchases, of the sort that have gotten nowhere
recently on the national level.
From the ballot language, the Initiative will:
apply the background check requirements currently used for
firearm sales by licensed dealers to all firearm sales and
transfers where at least one party is in Washington. Background
checks would thus be required not only for sales and transfers of
firearms through firearms dealers, but also at gun shows, online,
and between unlicensed private individuals. Background checks would
be required for any sale or transfer of a firearm, whether for
money or as a gift or loan, with specific exceptions described
below. Background checks would be required whether the firearm
involved is a pistol or another type of firearm. Violations of
these requirements would be crimes.
People who Washington law tries to bar from firearms ownership
include, also from the Initiative language:
Washington law makes it illegal for convicted felons to possess
firearms. It also makes it illegal for certain others to possess
firearms, including people who: (1) have been convicted of certain
misdemeanors; (2) have been issued certain types of restraining
orders; (3) have been found not guilty of a crime by reason of
insanity; (4) have been found mentally incompetent; or (5) have
certain criminal charges pending. It is a felony to deliver any
firearm to any person reasonably believed to be prohibited from
owning or possessing a firearm.
It passed with 60 pecent support. This led sources from
Time to
Mother Jones to
The Atlantic to declare that taking it straight to the
voters is the new way for gun control to succeed in an America
allegedly paralyzed by over-powerful pro-gun lobbying to
politicians.
Progressives who get angry at the notion of big money
manipulating the electorate will probably not be alarmed to note
that, with the NRA choosing to toss in only around a half a
million, that Washington’s initiative had pro voices outspending
anti enormously—Ballotpedia
has pro forces spending over $10 million, and anti only around
$600,000. Enemy
of all freedoms Michael Bloomberg gave $50 million overall to
one of the groups pushing this initiative, “Everytown for Gun
Safety.” (Big donors for 594 also included Bill and Melinda Gates
to the tune of a million, and Paul Allen to the tune of a half
million.)
They have their eye on doing the same in Nevada in 2016, if they
fail to get the legislature to pass such laws in the meantime.
Colorado and Oregon saw such laws pass by initiative in the early
’00s, but that strategy had gone into abeyance, largely due to lack
of anti-gun funding, which Bloomberg and his operation has helped
correct.
David Frum pointed out some of the historical ironies in the gun
control context of this happening in Washington:
The passage of 594 takes on extra meaning because Washington
state was the place where the gun lobby scored the electoral
victory that supposedly
proved its invincibility, the defeat of House Speaker Thomas
Foley in his own district in 1994. Foley, a longtime supporter of
gun rights, had helped pass two gun restrictions in 1993 and 1994:
the Brady Bill restricting some handgun sales and the temporary
assault-weapons ban, the latter inspired
by a gun massacre at Spokane’s Air Force base that killed
four and wounded 23. Then-NRA President Charlton Heston came to
Foley’s district to campaign against him. Foley’s defeat seemed to
prove forever the invincibility of the pro-gun
cause.
Initiatives may well prove to be a successful tack for gun
controllers again in the future, more’s the pity.
While money does not equal victory
in these sorts of contests, it behooves civil rights groups
dedicated to the Second Amendment to take these efforts more
seriously in the future.
Such a strategy won’t work everywhere, naturally, as see this
week Alabama voters approving by 70 percent Amendment 3, which, as
the Alabama Media Group’s
Al.com reports:
The amendment was introduced to the state legislature by Rep.
Mike Jones (R-Andalusia), and it specifies that the right to bear
arms is a fundamental right for citizens of the state of
Alabama.It will require ‘strict scrutiny,’ the highest level of judicial
review, for any restriction of that right.
Background checks may seem mild, but they are the sort of
regulation that can easily end up destroying people’s lives for
doing something inherently innocent but for the law: peacefully
transfering ownership of their lawful property to someone who, in
the overwhelming number of cases, will not use that property to
harm anyone else.
At best, such background checks are a purely ceremonial
way to block the (in almost all cases) innocent from being able to
own vital means of self-defense, and shouldn’t be taken lightly by
supporters or opponents. Things that leave people open to arrest
are very serious, and merely ignoring government paperwork
requirements in sales of property that, again, in the overwhelming
number of cases are never used to harm the innocent, shouldn’t be
the cause of throwing someone in prison or imposing onerous fines
on them. (A first offense under 594 will be a gross
misdemeanor; each subsequent offense a class C
felony.)
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