Why you’d better get out and vote:
“…if an offender does break into your house, and they steal your unsecured firearm, you may be held liable for the criminal’s actions, victimizing you twice — once by the criminal and again by the state.”
“This extreme initiative mandates blatant age discrimination, requires additional costly firearm registration, increased waiting periods, costly mandatory training, draconian firearm storage requirements, unfair purchase tax, and more — none of which will stop criminals or protect our Washington schools.”
“This initiative is being bankrolled by a handful of out-of-state and wealthy Seattleites who are only concerned with pushing a failed California-style gun control agenda instead of real solutions that will keep all of Washington’s schools and communities safe.”
“Please vote no to reject this false security that only restricts your, your family’s, and friends’ and neighbors’ right to self-defense.” Alan Gottlieb, Vote No On i1639: Don’t Criminalize Self-Defense
If it passes. I hope the 1st unfortunate person caught up in it suits the crap out of the state.
I hope the first person caught up in it is the bodyguard of a wealthy liberal with very deep pockets to be emptied by the courts.
+1
I hear that now each new gun sold in Washington will come with a tube of KY Jelly. Complements of the government.
Well, zap carry is the deepest concealment…
If this passes, my Remington Model 24 .22 caliber squirrel gun made in 1932 is magically a “semiautomatic assault rifle”
That is the most outrageous portion of this Iniative. The rest of it could be explained as “well-intentioned but misinformed” like most gun regulation schemes, but the reclassification of all self loaders as “semiautomatic assault rifles” is a patently cynical way to nose-of-the-camel their way in to a national effort to change what all rifles are called and use that as a lever to regulate and eventually ban all semis.
Why we aren’t being louder about that aspect is beyond me and will be our downfall.
Most people don’t give a shit if we have to wait or take x amount of “training” to get a rifle, but once I explained it to her, even my very anti gun Mother said “oh, that’s a bridge to far” and is voting against this thing.
The reclassification issue is the only way to defeat 1639.
I’ve been pointing out that idiotic portion of the law to anyone I can. I think even most people on the left find that ridiculous.
The .22 isn’t the outrageous part. The whole law is outrageous. Quit trying to reduce the argument to whether a .22 is an issue because they might just cull it out and leave the rest. The whole thing needs to die.
If you don’t vote you are helping make it law.
You have to know your audience… If we can flip people to a no vote by pointing out that a tube fed 22 semi-auto would be an “assault weapon”, then that’s the tactic I’m going to take. These people don’t write the laws, they just vote on them.
One problem with ballot initiatives is that they’re all-or-nothing. You can’t vote for only the parts that might be enforceable. The legislative process has opportunities to cull the nonsense from a bill draft through debate, though a legislature dominated by a single party can choose to shortcut that safeguard. (Sorta like using duct tape to hold your rifle’s selector on “fire”.)
After it passes, it’s left to the courts to fix everything from simple drafting errors to constitutional incompatibility to divergences from physical reality.
Absolutely correct. The initiative process in Washington has been the source of a raft of poorly written (even aside from the actual merits of the intent of the proposal) law that is practically unenforceable. The anti-gunners (antigu? like Antifa?) took their best shot with “assault weapon” , “safe storage” and several other restrictions in the legislature earlier this year – fortunately none of them made it through committee; but any astute gun person knew that that crap would be back in initiative form, thanks to Nick Hanauer, Paul Allen (may he rot….), and the other anti-gun billionaires.
I-1639 is 30 pages long. Does anyone really believe that the signers read the whole thing?
If it can’t fit on a standard, single-spaced sheet of paper, it can’t go before the people. That’s my first suggestion to fix what is clearly a broken process in WA (and OR from what I understand).
The law governing the initiative process in WA clearly states the presentation requirements to make sure people know what they’re signing on to. This one failed to meet the law, and was declared invalid by a district court judge — but the progressive billionaire’s club found a state supreme court judge to overturn the ruling.
The rule of law is dying in this state. Progressivism is a terminal disease.
or a novel approach of criminalizing Anti American Marxist tyrants.
Remember, regardless of what the DA promises, you want a jury trial and you want it NOW (speedy)! See how far it flies, then.
Lincoln County WA commissioners just released a statement against I-1639 and that it is unconstitutional. May other Eastern WA counties stand up against Seattle libs.
Alas, it shall pass. The sheeple have spoken.
If you read the text of the initiative you see on the ballot, it is very short.
Blah blah blah safety, blah blah blah puppies, blah blah blah children…AND OTHER PROVISIONS.
“Other provisions?!?!” (that part is a quote)
What are those other provisions? It’s the largest part of the state voter’s guide. TEN COMPLETE PAGES covering the “other provisions.”
Evil. God I hate politics. This is a total abuse of the state initiative process.
I just talked with a police officer in Central Washington, L.E. attitude is that, even if it passes, who will enforce it? So, Just like I-594, No one is enforcing it either. If I-1639 passes, if anyone caught in the leftist Western WA area, just demand a change of venue to Eastern WA, demand a speedy trial and you will walk. If it passes, it will be found to be unconstitutional.
Can’t buy a new semi auto rifle without being 21, registration, and a class. That’s very enforceable.
Under 21 will still buy and/or acquire the new definition of “assault rifle”. Not enforceable as a preventable measure at all. Those that do will simple be criminals, as only criminals under 21 will acquire “assault rifles” and more types of guns will be defined as such. This law does nothing to stop criminality, it simply denies a right to 18 to 20 year olds and increases the cost to exercise a right for everyone else. This law discriminates based on income and will negatively impact the right to self defense for middle class and low income. If you vote for I1693 you’re a racist and you discriminate against minorities, middle class and low income to defend themselves.
A. The police won’t enforce the law until someone on their personal or professional shit list runs afoul of one of the provisions and B. selective enforcement of laws by a public police force is some banana republic level BS.
My cube at work is all stickered up with “No on 1639,” and reading material for those curious.
I hope it pops up in the minds for folks when they go to vote.
Polls show it leading – but then all the polls are being taken by or financed by the lib Seattle media or U of W, almost assuring biased results if not outright lies.
Joe Huffman (blog.joehuffman.org) has been posting some great posters and blurbs on his blog against this atrocity. I really hope enough non-Seattle voters rally against this thing…..
It will probably pass on the population saturated west side of the state and that’s all that’s necessary.
Us poor hicks in Petticoat Junction here on the east side don’t count or exist.
Gotta go, Uncle Joe is calling.
I think Thurston county is safe. Lots of “No” signs and I’ve only seen a single “Yes” on 1639 sign, it was surrounded by 3 “No” signs.
It’s King Couny that is the problem.
Snohomish county will likely be close, but it may fail here as well. Lots of anti-Seattle sentiment. Also, the fact that other initiatives are billionaire-sponsored may stimulate voters to vote it all down – carbon tax, grocery taxes (ayes vote, actually) and 1639.
I haven’t heard that the bill includes additional time for those who steal and commit crimes with the guns. Or would that interfering with their rights?
Sounds like an issue that can easily be prevented by responsible gun owners who lock up their guns in a safe. Public support of gun owners will be really low when gun owners complain about being responsible.
Er…no. This is backwards. If somebody breaks into my house and steals my guns, I’ve contributed to violent crime in the same way women provide sex to rapists.
And btw, I do have a safe in which my guns always reside (unless I’m carrying one). I refuse to accept the legitimacy of any law that would punish victims for something a criminal did to them.
Buy yourself a Ring camera for a safe for the highly improbable possibility that a thief has enough time and tools to break into a safe.
With the ring camera, you will have a time and footage and it will be stored in the cloud so the thief cannot destroy it.
You can then send that to the police to clear yourself.
Now, you can stop what iffing things.
If your house or vehicle was locked that should be sufficient and the district attorney and judge should do their job to make sure Bubba isn’t out on probation in 6 months for his 4th offense rather than me having to bear the cost or intrusion of video surveillance.
I don’t have money for that shit. And you’re missing the point.
How is it right for the law to hold YOU liable for a crime that was committed by someone else AGAINST YOU? And then to hold you liable for what a criminal does with something he stole from you?
All safes do is slow down the thief. Anything that can be built can be broken, given enough time, and the initiative does not give any details as to what sort of safe is deemed adequate.
More generally, good luck getting a landlord to grant permission to let you bolt a safe to wall studs or a concrete slab. The ‘safe’ provision is basically a practical ban on the possession of firearms by renters. And the ‘background check required for all transfers’ provision passed in the previous initiative means you can’t legally store your guns in a buddy’s safe.
If my house is locked when I leave, then my guns are in a secured, locked container.
I don’t have kids or irresponsible fuckwits living in my home, so that is all I should need.
I have a safe and various other security devices for my stuff because I choose to do that, but it should be none of your damn business.
Most guns are not stolen in burglaries. After vehicles, most guns are stolen by friends or family members/relatives. Buy a safe to keep visiting sticky hands away especially if you have minors under 25 in your family.
I have a vote no I-1639 yard sign and I have already voted. Not much else I can do except try to educate stupid people.
The Truth About The Guns We Used To Have
(Left this comment on another post a couple days ago, but it applies here, too. Prepare yourself, cuz it’s long…I had a lot to say.)
If I-1639 passes in WA, 90% of gun owners will own “assault weapons” as defined by law.
In 2011, I bought my first gun — a Marlin Model 60 tube-fed .22 rifle — on impulse. I had an hour to kill after dropping the kids off at the local game shop for Pokemon league, so I went to a nearby sporting goods store to wander the aisles.
I’d been thinking about getting a gun for quite a while, and when I stopped at the gun counter and asked them about affordable starter rifles, everything clicked. Time, place, price, opportunity.
When I picked up the kids a half-hour later, I was a first-time gun owner. It started a sea change in the way I looked at the world — a change that came not a moment too soon. It’s involved the entire family. We all know how to shoot (and do it safely), and there are 3 gun owners in my household now.
But if I-1639 had been in place then, I wouldn’t have been able to walk out of the store with that classic little .22 rifle. Because it would have been an “assault weapon.”
Instead, I would’ve had to wait 10 days, and then wait for my local police chief to personally okay the purchase (and they don’t do that sort of thing in this “progressive” college town; I have to go to the county sheriff to get my CCW permit processed).
Then I’d have to take a special training course — which isn’t offered in this little college town, either. The nearest one is a 2 hour drive away. It costs $90. Oh, and there’s an “assault weapons” tax of $25 to be paid, too. Doesn’t seem like a lot of money…but when you factor in travel time plus the price of gas, the law effectively doubles the price of that Marlin Model 60.
I had $175 and one half-hour to work with. If I-1639 had been in place, I would’ve been SOL. Buying a $160 plinking rifle would’ve taken weeks and cost well over $300 all told.
I had more money then than I do now, but even then I might have balked at the price of entry. Probably wouldn’t have jumped through all those hoops. And even if I had, I’d be required to renew my “assault weapon” training about now, and I don’t have the $ to do it.
Pay up or become a criminal, I guess.
And then there’s the ridiculous provision that would blame ME for contributing to violent crime if some criminal breaks into my home and steals my property. Talk about backwards. That’s like blaming women for providing sex to rapists.
If I hadn’t been able to get that little .22 rifle — which is now thisclose to being redefined as a super deadly “assault weapon” — I probably wouldn’t be here talking to you now, because I wouldn’t have known TTAG existed. I wouldn’t have come to know the Second Amendment community. I would never have discovered America’s true gun culture. I might never have come back around to the libertarian-constitutional-conservative point of view. Heck, I might still be voting for Democrats (I hope I’d have had more sense than that, but you never know).
My wife and kids wouldn’t know how to use guns properly and safely, and they wouldn’t be gun owners either. They’d probably believe everything the mainstream media told them about those evil guns and the bad and wrong people who own them.
How many decent people will a bad law like this discourage? I think the people behind I-1639 are banking on that number being pretty high.
None of the stuff the anti-gun side wants is about stopping crime. It’s all about stopping peaceful, law-abiding people like me and you. It’s about moving the gun-control line on that graph higher, by any means necessary. (But you already knew that.)
All that stuff: not knowing about a gun community or even owning a firearm? That is the point.
Making firearms ownership weird and icky is a stated goal of the anti gun folks.
Yep, that is exactly the point. That and squeezing people who already own guns until they can’t afford to keep them anymore.
VOTE NO; to “Authoritarianism and Statist Tyranny! Do NOT lose YOUR freedoms and Liberties under the Disguise of Public Safety!”
This initiative was almost not on the ballot. SAF sued, and won, to keep this off the ballot because of it violating the state law that a complete and legible copy of the initiative and exactly how it changes existing law had to be available to anyone signing it. The petitioners had a tiny shrunk down version of the text and used a different and more confusing method to show what was being changed.
Unfortunately, the state supreme court reversed the decision and basically said that no matter how defective an initiative petition is, no one has the legal ability to keep it off the ballot if it has enough signatures. They neatly ignored ruling on the issue of whether the initiative itself violated ate law.
It’s my hope that if it passes, SAF will immediately re-file the same exact lawsuit, presumably in the same court. I would hope they would win (looks good if they already won once) and this time the state supreme court wouldn’t have a way to weasel out of acknowledging all the ways this violated state law.
In some cities in WA (renton, for one), BB guns are considered firearms.
Under 1639, if your bb gun is stolen in one of these cities and used by a criminal later, have you now violated the safe storage law?
I would think this potentiality would serve to show how ridiculous these anti freedom initiatives are.
God help us.
If someone steals my car and takes it to commit a bank robbery and kills someone would I be guilty of robbery and murder because they stole my car? Really stupid (liberal) thinking.