NRA Celebrates After Judge Hands 2nd Amendment Advocates a Big Win in Washington
It is a rank injustice for states to forbid 18-year-olds from drinking alcohol while at same time the federal government deems them old enough to shoulder a rifle in the Army.
A similar injustice will occur in Washington state if liberals have their way. A gun-control group there is trying to raise the legal age for legally purchasing semiautomatic rifles to 21.
Thus the kinds of weapons 18-year-olds can possess when defending their country could not be privately purchased until the age of 21.
This is the intent of a ballot initiative led by the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, based in Seattle.
The group’s effort is certainly well-funded: The alliance raised over $3 million to gather signatures for the gun-control bill, according to The Seattle Times.
But the money appears to have been wasted.
Thurston County Superior Court Judge James Dixon denied the alliance’s initiative Friday because it did not follow state law in how to present the bill to voters.
The NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation had filed a lawsuit to stop the bill.
“The main problem with the initiative as printed on the back of each petition sheet was that it did not contain underlines showing proposed new additions to state gun law, nor were there strike-throughs showing what parts of existing law would be removed. As a result, plaintiffs argued, people who signed the petitions could not possibly know what the initiative would do,” the SAF said in a statement.
Dixon agreed and ordered the Washington Secretary of State’s Office — named as the defendant in the lawsuit — to stop its certification of the gun-control effort.
“Frankly, this court does not struggle with this issue,” the judge said, according to The Seattle Times. Dixon said state law requires that petitions “must have a readable, full, true, correct copy of the proposed measure.”
Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, saw upper-class chicanery behind the group’s initiative.
“A few billionaires donated millions of dollars to buy the signatures to get this fraudulent initiative on the ballot,” Gottlieb said in a statement Friday. “But they couldn’t buy the Court.”
“The initiative process has no place for deceit and deception,” he added. “The so-called Alliance for Gun Responsibility acted totally irresponsible in circulating this initiative to the voters and it not only cost them millions of wasted dollars but their credibility as well.”
Chris Cox of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action had a similar reaction.
“The National Rifle Association is glad to see the court today recognized how negligent, if not worse, gun control advocates were in their signature-gathering for this ill-advised ballot initiative,” he said.
Greg Wong, an attorney for the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, said the group was appealing Dixon’s decision. He said he expects the state Supreme Court to consider the appeal in the coming weeks.
Here’s hoping his group’s unjust initiative is rejected there as well.
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