President Barack Obama’s visit to Minneapolis on Monday provided a launch pad for what Minnesota attorney and gun rights activist David Gross suggested is an example of “clearly overreaching” by anti-gunners.
Gross was scheduled to testify Tuesday on some of the measures, which by his account include many of the things on the agenda here in Washington State: Roll back on shall-issue carry licenses and a ban on so-called “assault weapons” and magazines, and reverse state preemption. This week will see three days of hearings on several gun control measures. Tuesday's crowd was an overflow.
This column discussed the president’s visit Monday, during which he spoke before a group of police and public officials and acknowledged, “There won’t be perfect solutions, we’re not going to save every life.” He did, however, insist that if even one life could be saved by implementing some of these measures, it would be worth the effort.
“We can make a difference,” the president stated.
That could be said about Gross, who has been a stalwart on the gun rights issue, alongside his longtime friend and colleague, Prof. Joseph Olson, the Hamline University law professor who has been a thorn in the side of Minnesota gun prohibitionists for decades. They have made a difference in the North Star State. Olson’s mother lived in Issaquah for some time, and on one of his visits to her, this writer drove him to the King County Courthouse, where he successfully applied for a Washington State concealed pistol license.
The good news from Gross also resembles the gun control situation in the Evergreen State.
“The outstate Democrats (his term for rural lawmakers) are standing firm with gun owners and the Republicans on all of this B.S.,” he explained. “We’ll see whether our over 120,000 permit-to-carry holders, many of whom are Democrats, will put up with this…It all comes from the Metropolitan areas, from the ‘Metrocrats,’as we call them. Not even the sheriffs seem to be interested in this crap. One guy, Speaker of the House, a Democrat from outstate, said, ‘What is there about 61 Republicans and 7 Democrats that you don’t understand’?”
Here in Washington, the big push for additional gun restrictions comes from urban Democrats. Out in the rural areas, those ideas do not get much traction. Perhaps it is like that all over, because it is certainly the same in Illinois, where downstate Democrats hardly share the zeal for restricting gun rights that seems to be high on the wish list of Chicago-area Democrats.
“Metrocrats” is an interesting term, as used by Gross. They evidently have gun owners riled up because they are joining and contributing to the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance “like never before,” he reported.
“Metrocrats” might accurately describe Seattle’s legislative delegation. It almost makes them sound like a group of elitists who believe Seattle should be different from the rest of the state in terms of gun laws and other things. Metrocrats want to lead their city/state into the future, essentially ignoring the bumpkins in the boonies.
Reports suggest that the president’s visit to Minneapolis to pander his agenda was just the first such foray. Whether he will fly all the way to Seattle to pose with Gov. Jay Inslee and Mayor Mike McGinn for another such sales pitch is speculative at best, but it would be friendly territory for the kinds of ideas he wants to push.
The territory would get less hospitable east of Lake Washington, west of Puget Sound, and just about anywhere else off of the I-5 corridor. A fair number of Northwest gun owners voted for Obama, insisting that he would “never come after guns.” It’s not clear whether they are more upset with the president for making them look like fools, or with themselves for having been fooled.
Suggested reading:
Shooting Blanks: Facts Don't Matter to the Gun Ban Crowd
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