BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today said billionaire Paul Allen, who recently donated $500,000 to support gun control Initiative 594, has taken hypocrisy to a new level by reportedly attempting to purchase a WWII vintage German Panzer tank.
“While Paul Allen is eager to get his hands on a genuine weapon of war,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb observed, “he is all-too-willing to support a measure that throws obstacles in the way of law-abiding citizens who may just want to borrow or buy a firearm from a friend or in-law. How silly is that?”
Published reports say Allen’s Vulcan Warbirds company allegedly paid $2.5 million to a foundation for the tank, which apparently sits idle in California’s Portola Valley. When the Collings Foundation would not release the tank, claiming it was never actually sold and that it never intended to give the tank up, Allen’s company filed suit in San Mateo County.
“This is simply incredible,” Gottlieb said. “This elitist Seattle billionaire thinks it is just fine to make it more inconvenient for average citizens to buy, sell or loan a rifle, shotgun or handgun, but he wants to buy a German tank with a 75mm cannon! We looked through I-594, which Allen supports, and discovered why he’s probably hot to purchase that Panzer. I-594 has a tank-sized loophole.
“Tanks appear to be exempt under the gun control measure because they’re not specifically mentioned anywhere in those 18 pages,” he explained. “So, Allen wouldn’t have to go through a background check. But who needs a tank to go duck hunting?
“Evidently,” Gottlieb concluded, “the difference between billionaires and the rest of us is the size of the guns they want to own.”