As the country looks ahead with hopes that the New Year will be better than the past 12 months, anti-gunners will renew their agenda for stricter gun laws and they will be using the inexplicable attacks in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs to energize their arguments.
Second Amendment activists should keep an eye on Washington State, where anti-gun Attorney General Bob Ferguson will reportedly renew his push to ban so-called “assault weapons” and original capacity magazines. Ferguson, a Democrat, appeared at a Sandy Hook memorial rally in Seattle earlier this month to declare:
“It is not right that there are states in our country that have banned the sale of assault weapons and Washington state is not one of them. Does that make any sense to you? No. It is not right that there are states in our country that have limited high-capacity magazines to ten rounds and in Washington state there are no limits at all. Does that make any sense to you? It does not have to be that way.”
Rights activists are already planning a rally at the capitol in Olympia on Friday, Jan. 12. Organizers are hoping for an impressive turnout.
The Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility sent an email blast Friday morning, asking for contributions toward a goal of raising $50,000.
As reported earlier this month, anti-gunners also have their eye on the state preemption law. They want to dismantle it so that Seattle and other anti-gun cities can adopt their own gun control laws, which might contradict laws in neighboring jurisdictions resulting in a patchwork of regulations.
The danger nationally is that Washington’s law served as a model for similar laws in other states. If the gun control lobby can destroy the model, they can use their experience to attack those other laws. The ultimate goal would be to make gun ownership fraught with peril, so people would be discouraged through legislative intimidation from exercising their Second Amendment rights.
On the national level, the Senate still must act on concealed carry reciprocity. With one more Democrat on Capitol Hill due to the Alabama special election, prospects for passage of the reciprocity bill are not as good as they were a month ago.
The reality facing gun owners is that they may be able to celebrate over the weekend, but as the new year opens, they’re facing a renewed battle over gun control versus gun rights.
