Gun Owners Defy Washington Background Check Law as Rally Organizer Burns His Carry Permit

Organizers of the “I Will Not
Comply” rally promised mass defiance of Washington’s new
universal background check law in Olympia on Saturday and they met
their goal. Washington State Police estimate about 1,000 attendees,
while KIRO
reports that “hundreds openly carried their firearms.”
Attendees also overtly swapped firearms back and forth without
(*gasp*) background checks in explicit violation of the law. Police
stood by watching and probably wishing they were elsewhere.

As I
noted when the rally was first organized, the fellow credited
with organizing the rally is Gavin Seim, who burned his concealed
carry permit in front of attendees in protest of legal restrictions
on weapons ownership.

According to
The Olympian:

An estimated 1,000 gun rights activists converged Saturday on
the Capitol Campus, toting American flags, wearing camouflage and
carrying their guns.

The armed citizens turned out to participate in an I Will Not
Comply rally, protesting Initiative 594, a measure passed by voters
that expands background checks for firearm sales and transfers.

“We’re going to stand up for our rights,” event organizer Gavin
Seim said. “Our rights are not up for negotiation.”

Many in the crowd participated in what was touted as a group act
of noncompliance, passing their guns to one another. No one was
arrested as a result, and Washington State Patrol trooper Guy Gill
said the agency was not treating the acts as a crime.

“We’re not convinced that handing someone a gun is a violation
of 594,” Gill said.

Washington law enforcement officials may take that position when
facing an armed crowd of ticked off but well behaved gun owners,
but not everybody agrees. For instance, Dave Kopel, a prominent firearms
expert and adjunct professor at the University of Denver’s law
school, thinks the plain language of the law
does apply to simply holding somebody else’s firearm. See the
two felonious attendees in the photo above and the video below.

As an illustration of just how mainstream gun rights have
become, the Seattle Times
account of the protest placed it within the long American
history of civil disobedience.

Following a tradition going back to at least the Whiskey
Rebellion of the early 1790s, demonstrators gathered here Saturday
afternoon at the Capitol to protest the tyranny of what they
consider unlawful American government.

But instead of decrying a tax on distilled liquor such as
Pennsylvanians did just years after the U.S. Constitution was
ratified, demonstrators here at the “I Will Not Comply” rally
denounced a law expanding gun-purchase background checks that was
approved last month by Washington voters.

That the protest was peaceful, high-profile, and well-attended
should only encourage other opponents of the (frankly
unenforceable) background check law to add their own disobedience
to the mix.