With just over one month remaining before the November election, Washington gun rights groups are united against Initiative 1639, the 30-page gun control measure that has ignited a grassroots opposition movement that continues gaining momentum.
They are underfunded, but they are energized, reminding everyone within earshot that “dollars don’t vote, people do.”
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, National Rifle Association and Washington Arms Collectors have joined forces. CCRKBA is the sister organization of the Second Amendment Foundation, which challenged the measure’s validity in court last month, winning at trial but reversed by the state Supreme Court.
That ruling is at least partly responsible for the outrage that has brought gun owners out of their traditional election slumber to full alert. They are plastering the landscape with yard signs, posters, handouts and even have had a booth at the Washington State Fair in Puyallup, which wraps up this weekend.
On the other side, proponents of the initiative are also rallying their troops, and asking for donations from $5 on up to help pay for the campaign, despite the fact that they are backed by billionaires. This could signal gun owners to pony up with their own contributions to the opposition campaign.
Liberty Park Press spoke Thursday with nationally-syndicated radio host Mark Walters at Armed American Radio. He is hoping to bring his program to Washington State for broadcasts “from behind enemy lines” sometime in October. Walters is in Chicago this weekend for the 33rd annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, sponsored by SAF and CCRKBA.
Washington, he concurred, has become the gun rights battleground; it is “the Alamo.” His analysis was not unlike many others. If this measure passes in Washington, the well-financed gun prohibition movement will bring something similar to every other state with a citizen initiative process.
Pro-rights phone banks have been set up, more will be operating during the next six weeks, and activists will even be out at hunting camps and wildlife areas to remind hunters to vote.
