The Seattle Times’s Danny Westneat takes the side of a rural gun dealer and police chief who have decided a new state law increasing the minimum age for purchasing assault rifles from 18 to 21 doesn’t apply to them.
“Reckless sheriffs”? You keep saying these words, Lester Black. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
Westneat’s column comes as more than a dozen county sheriffs pledge not to enforce the entirety of the new gun control laws. These rural cops are subverting state law and the will of nearly 60 percent of Washington’s voters that agreed we should pass these common-sense gun control laws. Westneat thankfully questions the intentions of these reckless sheriffs, saying they are “way out of their lane on whether the new law is constitutional,” but for some reason he doesn’t bring his critical eye to this legal technicality over age minimums.
Am I the only one who thinks he typed “gun lovers” in a snarky, derisive way?
Technicalities can certainly doom laws in court and who knows, maybe these gun lovers have a point, but they don’t appear to be confident enough to bring this argument into a court of law. And Westneat doesn’t seem to have reached out to the state’s legal authorities, nor does his column quote any legal experts. He instead agrees with these gun lovers and then chides the gun reform lobby for needing to be “more bulletproof than this.”
Well Danny, you may need a more bulletproof legal team if you’re relying on a cop and gun dealer in West Richland for your advice.
– Lester Black for The Stranger, Don’t Believe the Seattle Times, it’s Still Illegal for Teens to Buy Assault Rifles