Tuesday, June 10, 2008

City of Seattle Property, Now Gun Violence Free

It is official, the Mayor has made the 2nd amendment null and void while on city of Seattle property. Kind of… at least in his mind.
After a shooting at the Northwest Folklife festival injured three people, Mayor Greg Nickels will prohibit guns at Seattle Center, parks, community centers and city-run buildings.

On Monday, Nickels announced he had signed an executive order, which does not require City Council approval, directing employees to draft a plan in 30 days to create a "gun-free policy" on city property. He has not set a date for the prohibition to take effect.

"Our parks, our community centers and our public events are safer without guns," Nickels said at a news conference with Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. "At many properties, including City Hall, you can bring a gun if you have a concealed-weapons permit. Under this order, people with concealed weapons will be asked to give up their weapon or leave."

The city does not have the authority to arrest or fine people for bringing a gun onto city property. Only the state can enact laws governing firearms, and the mayor acknowledged the city could face a legal challenge.

First some background, at the recent Folklife festival, where people who do not regularly bathe, gather to air out and do what they normally do the other 364 days of the year, nothing productive, there was a shooting which injured 3 people. Nobody died, 3 people were injured. Over the course of the 37 year history of Folklife, the number of shootings at the festival now total… I may need some time here to calculate the total… fire up the spare server with the dual processor… including this 1 shooting… that would be 1. 1 shooting, 37 years. Millions of people have gone to this festival and there has been 1 shooting, no deaths, in 37 years.

So Mayor Greg Nichols has taken it on himself to make us all safer from this epidemic of violence from this one shooting, in 37 years, by deciding unilaterally that the constitution, the part that say the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, should not apply on city owned property.

Now I understand the need to get this epidemic of gun violence of 1 shooting in 37 years at Folklife down to a rate that would make other gun free zones such as post offices or schools envious, oops, bad examples. But wouldn’t a better idea be to limit other constitutional rights that have no doubt been the source of more violence? If the Mayor imposed restriction on speech, such as outlawing the phrase “Dude, are you sure this is not oregano?, at Hempfest or any speech starting with the phrase "Yo Momma" at the hip hop festival, surely that would result in a greater reduction of violence and we are just limiting a right, not doing away with it. Doesn’t this make more sense? Who could possibly have a problem with this idea?

1 comment:

Seattle Sailor said...

I read this post at Ace Of Spades the other day and I have to say it's been really bugging me. It's not the writing concerning the 2nd Amendment, which I am a staunch supporter of. And it's not the criticism of Mayor Nickles. As a resident of Bellevue I feel fortunate that he's not my mayor. And I would be even happier if I wasn't under the quasi-fascist bootheel of Ron Sims.

What's been bugging me is your condescending attitude toward the people that attend and perform at Folklife. I understand you're generalizing for a (supposedly) humorous effect, but it fell really flat with me, and it's because my wife has performed as a bellydancer at Folklife (it's a hobby for her). And I have attended Folklife so I can watch her and also enjoy some of the other music and events. And we're both gainfully employed, and we bathe every day I can assure you. She works as an Aesthitician in downtown Bellevue at a prestigious salon who count the Gates' among their clients. I work as a civilian mariner in the Navy's Military Sealift Command and I'm a veteran of the Coast Guard. In fact I just returned from a deployment in the Persian Gulf. Oh, and we both voted for Bush in 2004.

I realize we may be an anomaly in that crowd, but we have a lot of friends that can be considered "artistic types". We don't talk much about the war, and people make assumptions about me because I am a veteran and I work for the Navy. If it does come up I point out that Clinton did the same thing when he ordered the 43 day bombing of Serbia and I supported it for the same reasons. That usually cools them off.

Anyhoo, to make a long rambling story slightly less long, I really like a lot of these people and I felt your generalizations were out of line. A lot of these people I meet are good natured, cultured people that I enjoy spending time with, even if I don't always agree with them, nor they with me.

Oh, and by the way, "Yo Mama" at a "Hip Hop Festival"? What the hell is that? Maybe you should try to find some black people to spend time with. That comment was borderline tragic.