Breitbart News previously reported on a January 15 rally in which Washington State representative Matt Shea (R-4th Dist.) pledged non-compliance with I-594 and other Second Amendment supporters openly carried and exchanged guns in the state’s House Gallery to show their own refusal to comply.
Democrats in the Washington state senate have now responded to this not by looking at what may be so irksome about I-594 but by changing senate rules so that Second Amendment supporters cannot openly carry guns in the Senate Gallery when they hold a similar demonstration.
To do this, they decided that guns were like “placards”–which are already banned in the Senate Gallery–thus guns carried in the open should be banned as well.
According to The Seattle Times, on January 16 Lt. Gov. and state senate president Brad Owen (D) announced “the public will no longer be able to openly carry firearms in the state Senate chamber’s public viewing area.” He said: “We’re just noting that open carry is a form of demonstration and it’s not different than carrying a placard or anything else of that nature.”
Owen also said it’s not fair to ban backpacks in the public viewing area while allowing openly carried firearms. He did not try to explain how an openly carried firearm is the same thing as a backpack or how an openly carried firearm can be used to carry and conceal items that can be carried and concealed in a backpack.
Instead, he and his fellow senate Democrats satisfied themselves with instituting this new measure of gun control to dissuade people from opposing the gun control contained in I-594.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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