History has it that on March 15, 44 B.C. Julius Caesar was assassinated by members of the Roman Senate, but today’s politicians have a different strategy to remove something they don’t like: they claim to “support the Second Amendment…but.”
In an interview with KING 5 News in Seattle, the local NBC affiliate, Wednesday Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson told a reporter, “I support the right to bear arms. I support the Second Amendment…but, within that Second Amendment, just like there are limits on the First Amendment, freedom of speech, there can be common sense limits to that constitutional right.”
Ferguson reinforced the rumored threat of an upcoming gun control initiative in Washington State this year after legislation restricting so-called “assault weapons” failed to get the nod.
“I would be surprised if there was not something on the ballot this year or an effort to put something on the ballot this year around raising the age to purchase an assault weapon, limiting high capacity magazines or even banning the sale of assault weapons. I just think there’s a lot of momentum; a lot of folks are interested. It takes a lot of work to get something on the ballot, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a serious attempt made to put some combination of those proposals on the ballot because the legislature simply won’t do it.”—Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson
This interview was aired on the same day that KIRO – the local CBS affiliate – did a live broadcast headlined “An Urgent Conversation about Guns” in which one of several panelists, Sandy Brown from the Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility, complained that gun control proponents have a hard time pushing their agenda.
“We are often times confronted with obstacles, such as the Second Amendment Foundation,” he stated.
Gun owners watching the broadcast have privately suggested that the real “obstacle” Brown and his colleagues face is not SAF, but the Second Amendment, itself. It remains a pesky tenet of the Bill of Rights, but when reminded that it protects a right, rather than a regulated privilege, Brown and several people in the KIRO audience shook their heads.
At one point during that program, one panelist made a remark about politicians who shouldn’t take any more money from the National Rifle Association. That raises an interesting point, because there are also politicians who take money from gun prohibition lobbying groups.
For example, according to the state Public Disclosure Commission, Washington State Sen. Manka Dhingra (D-45th District), who was also a KIRO panelist, received $1,000 from the anti-gun Everytown for Gun Safety during her campaign last fall. Dhingra also received two donations of $1,000 each from Brown’s organization, one for the primary and one for the general election.
Liberty Park Press is aware of another Democrat state senator who recently wrote to a constituent, “I am a supporter of the second amendment (sic), but I am also not someone who is automatically opposed to all ideas that deal with regulating guns.”
According to the PDC report, this senator received $1,000 from Everytown in October 2016, and $1,000 from Brown’s Alliance group in July 2016 and another $1,000 from the Alliance in October 2016. He got a separate $1,000 from Alliance founder Nick Hanauer that same month for that year’s legislative election.
When William Shakespeare wrote the classic play “Julius Caesar,” he included a scene in which a soothsayer warns the famous Roman, “Beware the Ides of March.”
Beware, indeed.
