Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) is bringing her presidential campaign to Seattle Friday for a fundraiser and an appearance at what is being billed as a “Gun Safety Roundtable.”
But Harris, the anti-gun candidate who vowed earlier this year to take executive action on gun control if she is elected president, in the event Congress doesn’t do what she wants within 100 days of inauguration, doesn’t appear to have any company on this “roundtable.” However, her promise ranks second only to former Congressman “Beto” O’Rourke’s threat earlier this month during the candidates’ debate to seize semi-auto modern sporting rifles in terms of alarms among Second Amendment activists.
There are scant details about who else will be appearing on this forum, at either Harris’ campaign website or on the campaign’s Facebook page. It is doubtful, however, that any representatives from the National Rifle Association, Washington Arms Collectors, Washington State Rifle & Pistol Association or Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms will be joining the senator.
The event is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. Friday at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center in Seattle. The program begins at 3:15 p.m.
According to MyNorthwest.com, Harris is also hosting a fundraiser Friday on Capitol Hill. That event is scheduled to run from 5 to 7 p.m. and general admission tickets are already sold out.
Earlier this year, during a CNN forum, Harris told the audience, “We need reasonable gun safety laws in this country starting with universal background checks and renewal of the assault weapons ban.”
But she didn’t stop there.
“Upon being elected,” Harris detailed, “I will give the United States Congress 100 days to get their act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws. If they fail to do it then I will take executive action and specifically what I will do is put in place a requirement that for anyone who sells more than five guns a year they are required to do background checks when they sell those guns.”
She would also have gun dealers who violate the law to be stripped of their firearms licenses by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Still, the question remains about Friday’s event. What is a “gun safety roundtable?” Will it include advice on concealed carry, muzzle control, sight alignment, knowing one’s “backstop” and other considerations, or will it be two hours of gun control rhetoric about background checks, so-called “red flag” laws without due process, and adding more restrictions and red tape for law-abiding gun owners to jump through in order to exercise a constitutionally-delineated fundamental right?
Currently, according to recent data from the state Department of Licensing, as of Sept. 1, there were just over 629,000 active concealed pistol licenses in Washington. Of those, 99,693 were in King County, which encompasses Seattle. Roughly one in five CPL holders in the state is a female.
