Supporters of new gun background check come out firing in campaign launch

The battle over gun control in Washington State heated up Thursday as backers of a new initiative to require background checks for all gun sales kicked off the campaign to pass I-594.

The measure is one of a pair of gun initiatives on the November ballot this year, with the competing I-591 seeking to block any new state gun regulations that have not been enacted at the federal level.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg was among a large and diverse group that turned out for the I-594 campaign kickoff. The Republican argues state laws prohibiting gun sales to convicted felons, minors and those who have been involuntarily committed for mental illness are far too easily evaded.

“You can buy a gun from Craigslist, you can buy a gun out of the trunk of a car, you can buy a gun on the street with no questions asked,” he says. “And the point of I-594 is, let’s make sure that people who are buying guns are legally allowed to have them.”

The measure has widespread support, including from Puget Sound-area faith leaders who banded together after the mass shooting at a Newtown, Connecticut elementary school. It has been endorsed by the state’s Catholic bishops and has raised $1.5 million in what is expected to be an expensive and extremely contentious battle.

“Complacency may reign in Olympia but Washington citizens will not be complacent,” says Cheryl Stumbo, who was shot and seriously wounded in the 2006 Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle shooting that killed one person.

Stumbo says she collected 3,000 signatures herself to get the measure on the ballot. “We are here because we have had enough,” she said at the campaign launch of failures by the legislature to pass gun control measures.

Gun rights advocates backing the rival I-591 argue I-594 is just the first step in ultimately taking away the rights of law abiding gun owners, and have vowed to do all to stop it.

“Washington gun owners are concerned that passage of I-594 paves the way for a massive government registry, the likes of which are already being used against gun owners in California and New York, where a generation ago, gun control proponents scoffed at gun owner concerns about registration, calling those concerns paranoid,” Dave Workman wrote recently in GUNMAG, a publication of the Second Amendment Foundation, according to Joel Connelly at the Seattle P-I. Connelly reports.

Satterberg argues the measure is one of safety and simple common sense.

“There’s no reason that responsible gun owners should be concerned about I-594. It imposes a minimal inconvenience when you want to sell your gun,” he says. “This is no more an inconvenience than the rule that says we have to get our auto emissions checked before we renew our tabs. Yeah it’s a hassle but it’s for the better good because we all have to breathe the air.”