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Posted on 03/25/2009 5:21:50 AM PDT by marktwain
BELLEVUE, Wash., March 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Once again when faced with a controversy, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is reviving his plan to ban legally-carried firearms from city property, and the Second Amendment Foundation today promises once again to immediately take him to court.
"This time around," said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb, "Mayor Nickels needs to raise this issue to distract public attention from the political smell arising from the snow-plowing investigation. We remind the mayor that his office has been warned by Attorney General Rob McKenna that neither he, nor the city, has the authority to enact such a ban under state preemption.
"Mayor Nickels thinks he can enact this ban merely by executive order," Gottlieb observed. "He's not even thinking of putting this before the city council as a proposed ordinance, because he knows it would never pass. Greg Nickels is the mayor of Seattle, not the emperor of a city-state."
Nickels' plan was revealed by the Seattle Weekly Tuesday morning. A spokesman for the mayor's office told the newspaper that the ban "is expected to begin sometime in May." Gottlieb said SAF expects to be joined in a legal action by other gun rights organizations.
"Mayor Nickels evidently believes he is above the law, and that 'if the mayor does it, it is not illegal,'" said Joe Waldron, legislative director for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. "You might as well call him 'President Nixon.'"
"At the public hearing on this issue in December," Gottlieb recalled, "people were literally lining up to be involved in a lawsuit. Nickels and his staff are trying to portray the opposition as coming from outside the city, but that argument is specious at best. Whether people just visit the city frequently, work in Seattle or live there, they have every right to expect Seattle to comply with state statute.
"If the mayor thinks this will divert attention away from the snow plowing controversy," Gottlieb said, "he's mistaken. This ploy won't cure that headache. It will only give him another."
The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation's oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 600,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
Anyone (without issues) could get a CCW permit.
I guess the left can't help but seize more and more power.
Glad I left that Leftist shi&hole.
It’s simultaneously frightening and infuriating that an elected official can completely ignore a clear, obvious law on his own whim. We don’t have royalty in America, and we don’t have the rule of men - we have the rule of law. Mayor Nickels is a dictator, and all like him need to be removed from office by all proper means, and never elected to another office again, ever.
He doesn’t care. Court costs will be picked up by residents of Seattle.
Actually, we some time ago went from being a ‘nation of laws’ to a ‘nation of men’ although some of the putative men should perhaps be called persons. When tax cheats are nominated for and confirmed to positions of authority such as Secretray of Treasury, when members of Congress flout with impunity the laws of the land (Chas Rangel comes first to mind) and when such ‘minor’ rulers as mayors seek to enact their prejudices into law by executive fiat then we are no longer ruled by laws. We can ignore it and hope it goes away, we can silently acquiesce, we can try to replace the corrupt via the ballot box or, just maybe, we may have to resort to the last resort of the disenfranchised. I know not what course others may take, but as for me I declare my stand to be that of Thomas Paine. (Yes, I know how he ended up at the hands of the rulers of his day.)
Nickels needs to be sued on a personal level making him put his easily earned money on the line. That is what the democrats are doing to Palin in Alaska.
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