BELLEVUE, WA – Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, newly-elected president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, will be using his new position to push an anti-gun agenda at a White House meeting planned later this summer, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms warned today.
“Greg Nickels knows he will find a sympathetic ear in the Oval Office for his illegal gun control scheme,†said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Like Barack Obama, Mayor Nickels is an opponent of legal concealed carry, and he desperately wants the authority to unilaterally ban the lawful carrying of firearms on public property, regardless of state law and the state and federal constitutional protections of the right to keep and bear arms.
“Nickels may be inspired by Obama’s current ability to push a social agenda,†he observed. “Both seem to believe they have some imperial mandate to shape the world by executive order with no legislative oversight or intervention. The United States is a Republic, not a socialist monarchy, and the City of Seattle is not Greg Nickels’ personal fiefdom.â€
Mayor Nickels has been threatening to ban all legally-carried firearms from all city property, despite warnings from State Attorney General Rob McKenna that he is prohibited from doing so under the state’s long-standing model preemption law. CCRKBA, the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association are prepared to sue if Nickels carries out his threat.
“Greg Nickels and Barack Obama evidently don’t get it that American gun owners want to eliminate violent crime as much as they do,†Gottlieb noted. “However, pushing an agenda to disarm law-abiding citizens is not the way to accomplish that goal.
“Seattle’s anti-gun mayor should not use the Mayors’ Conference as a platform from which to carry on his irrational crusade against firearms civil rights,†he concluded, “in Seattle, at the White House or anywhere else.â€