Over the past two bienniums (2021-2023 and 2023-2025) the Washington State Department of Commerce has apparently provided more than $350,000 to the Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group which hardly needs taxpayer support, Ammoland has learned.
Public documents available online for both bienniums show the Commerce Department provided $263,750 to the Alliance during the 2021-2023 biennium for “Grants, Benefits & Client Services” and “Goods and Services,” In the 2023-2025 biennium, Commerce provided $102,102 in public funding to the Alliance, again for “Grants, Benefits & Client Services” and in July of last year, $30,000 for “Personal Service Contracts.”
The grand total for taxpayer money—including Evergreen State gun owners who pay taxes—over the past two bienniums comes to $365,852, and that does not include the proposed expenditure of another $100,000 this year for what is being labeled by Second Amendment activists as a ‘gun control conference” in Seattle. Checking back further, there does not appear to have been earlier allocation of state funds to the Alliance.
As explained by attorney Bill Kirk, president of Washington Gun Law, in a recent YouTube video, “They are using your tax dollars to disarm you.”
TheGunMag.com, an online firearms news publication owned by the Second Amendment Foundation—which does not receive funding from the Washington Commerce Department—has been probing state support for the Alliance, since the agency’s solicitation of proposals from individuals or groups to support an early June event called “Together We End Gun Violence (TWEGV).”
Up to $100,000 is available for this project, according to the solicitation, which is called a “Request for Qualifications and Quotes” (RFQQ), Ammoland reported recently.
In total, if the full amount is spent, the Commerce Department will have provided nearly a half-million dollars of public funds to a private organization whose goal is to severely restrict the public ownership of firearms, which is constitutionally protected.
In an email to the Commerce Department, TGM and Ammoland asked the following:
- “Why would a private gun control organization, which is supported by wealthy donors, need state/public money for grants, benefits and client services?
- “Why would the state Commerce Department provide such funding to a private group which lobbies heavily to restrict the rights of law-abiding Washington state residents guaranteed and protected by Article 1, Section 24 of the state constitution and the Second Amendment of the U.S. constitution?
- “Would such public funding allocations be available to groups such as the Washington State Rifle & Pistol Association, Washington Arms Collectors and the Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms?”
There was no immediate response, other than a referral to a different individual within the agency, who did not immediately respond.
Attorney Kirk, in his video, had these observations:
“When you live in a state like Washington, and they start talking about ending gun violence, what they are actually talking about is ending gun ownership.”
“What this really is, is taxpayer funded propaganda on behalf of the Washington State Democratic Party.”
“Understand this, Washington. We probably do need our own DOGE program because, right now, the Department of Commerce is about to waste $100,000 of your taxpayer money so that they can put on a propaganda event in downtown Seattle and espouse the virtues of civilian disarmament.”
As Kirk and others have repeatedly pointed out, in the Evergreen State, gun control has become a top priority of the majority Democrats in the Legislature, along with former Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee and current Governor Bob Ferguson, who was state attorney general during Inslee’s 12 years in office. Ferguson has been a close ally of the Alliance and has appeared at several events.
TheGunMag has reached out to Republican State Rep. Jim Walsh, who also chairs the State Republican Party.
One thing is clear. Since Washington began pushing increasingly restrictive gun control measures starting in 2014, the number of homicides in the state has doubled. Yet, as reported last year, the Giffords gun control state scorecard gives Washington high marks for its restrictive gun laws. The state has banned so-called “large-capacity magazines” and “assault weapons.” Both bans are now being challenged in court. The state has imposed a 10-day waiting period on all firearms transfers, effectively creating a nightmare for gun show operators, which appears to have been the intention. There is now an education and training requirement, which opponents have likened to the long-unconstitutional “literacy test” for voting. And now Washington Democrats are pushing to adopt a permit-to-purchase requirement, which critics argue is wholly unconstitutional.
Perhaps the only conclusion to be reached is that restrictive gun control laws are important, but body counts are not.
RELATED:
- Fury as WA State Commerce Dept. Offers Funding for Gun Control Event
- Study Finds Opposite Facts of Anti-Gun Group’s State Crime Ratings!? Are They That Dishonest?
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