Editorial: What King brings to discussion of gun safety bills

By The Herald Editorial Board

Coming a day after the observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it’s of little surprise that a House committee hearing Tuesday considering several bills on gun safety measures referenced the civil rights leader and adherent of nonviolence, who was gunned down by a sniper’s high-powered rifle 56 years ago this April.

“It is very fitting that we are today looking at legislation following our celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day yesterday, a person who very much taught us alternate ways of conflict resolution other than violence,” said Trudi Inslee, also noting King’s assassination by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968.

Inslee, the wife of Gov. Jay Inslee, and an advocate for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, was speaking in favor of House Bill 1902, which seeks to add to gun safety laws passed in recent years, including legislation last year that now requires a background check, and a 10-day waiting period before purchase. The proposed legislation would add to existing law, requiring a person obtain a permit to purchase a firearm and proof of completion of a firearms safety course, prior to the purchase.

Inslee told lawmakers that research has shown that laws combining background checks and a permit to purchase have reduced both homicides and suicides by firearm, citing a 1995 law in Connecticut that reduced firearm homicides by 28 percent and firearm suicides by 33 percent over a two-decade period.

But others invoked King to argue against the legislation.

Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels attempted to equate the Second Amendment right to possess firearms with the First Amendment right to free speech, asking lawmakers to imagine King being required to get a permit to speak or take a class to learn what was appropriate to say before he could speak and lead protests and marches.

“House Bill 1902 is doing exactly that for the Second Amendment,” Nowels said.

Nowels’ comparison of the amendments, however, is an apples-to-oranges juxtaposition and ignores the limits that are placed on the First Amendment’s free speech rights. The organizers of some demonstrations do, in fact, have to obtain permits if a protest could obstruct vehicle or pedestrian traffic. And First Amendment rights are not absolute; the government can and has barred libel, obscenity, fighting words, incitements to violence, threats and more; just as the U.S. Supreme Court since 2008 has recognized that Second Amendment rights are not unlimited, as the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, that it was “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any matter whatsoever for whatever purpose.”

Later during the hearing, John Nelson, identified as a concerned citizen and testifying remotely, noted “as a husband, son, father, veteran and black man, I find it quite ironic that we are speaking about bills that restrict our civil rights around the day where we celebrate the life of Dr. King, who himself was not allowed to own firearms.”

Martin Luther King Jr., in truth, did initially support and practice the right to own firearms early in his work as a civil rights leader, up until white supremacists in 1956 fire-bombed his Montgomery. Ala., home, where he and his wife and children lived. At the request of friends and family concerned for his and his family’s safety, King applied for a concealed weapons permit but was denied by the local sheriff, who deemed him “unsuitable.”

“Meanwhile, I reconsidered,” King wrote. “How could I serve as one of the leaders of a nonviolent movement and at the same time use weapons of violence for my personal protection? …

“I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that I couldn’t keep a gun, I came face-to-face with the question of death and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun, nor have I been afraid. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors,” King wrote.

King’s realization — that rather than providing protection, guns posed a threat in his home — has since been borne out by nearly 70 years of statistics.

“Family fire,” the likelihood that a shooting in a home — accidental or intentional — is caused by a family member, accounts for a majority of the 35,000 deaths and 90,000 injuries from firearms each year in the United States. Further, access to a gun increases the risk of death by suicide by 300 percent; and 75 percent of school shootings have resulted from children or youths having access to unsecured firearms in the home.

The “permit to purchase” legislation is among several bills under consideration by state lawmakers that could add to safeguards provided by existing law. Among them:

Senate Bill 5444 would bar the open-carry of firearms, with exceptions for law enforcement and others, in parks, public libraries, zoos and aquariums, transit facilities and state and local buildings. The legislation would not apply to those with concealed carry permits.

House Bill 1903 would require gun-owners to report lost or stolen firearms to law enforcement within 24 hours.

House Bill 2054 would prohibit firearms dealers from delivering more than one firearm to a purchaser within a 30-day period, again with exemptions for law enforcement and others.

All recognize the reality of the Second Amendment and its place among the rights guaranteed by U.S. and state constitutions. At the same time the legislation, adopted and proposed, seeks to balance those rights with measures to better assure the safety of all.

House Bill 1902, Trudi Inslee and others said, seeks to provide those considering the purchase of a firearm with time and education to consider — as Martin Luther King Jr. did — the weight of responsibility and the duties in keeping and using firearms.

“I would hope that this legislation would help people take the time necessary to think about what they are doing, if they want to have a weapon, to have the waiting period and have the training,” Inslee said.