The appointment of anti-gun rights former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels as an alternate representative to the United Nations has removed any doubt about the Obama administration's intentions regarding global gun control initiatives, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Nickels, a founding member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the author of Seattle's failed attempt to override Washington's state firearms preemption statute, was sworn in Wednesday to "help represent the United States in the UN assembly," according to the Seattle Times.

"Putting an extremist gun banner in any position to represent this country at the United Nations amounts to renting a billboard for advertising against the Second Amendment," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. "While he was Seattle's mayor, Greg Nickels supported every anti-gun scheme put forth by Washington CeaseFire, the Northwest's most active gun prohibition lobby.

"Nickels is a gun ban proponent," he continued, "so his appointment as an alternate to the UN is a clear signal of Barack Obama's intention to rubber stamp the UN's global gun ban agenda. We had to sue Nickels while he was still Seattle's mayor to overturn his illegal city parks gun ban. Now he gets to push his anti-gun philosophy on a world scale. It hardly seems a coincidence that Nickels has been appointed by the Obama administration at a time when the UN is considering treaties and initiatives that pose a serious threat to the Second Amendment."

Nickels was turned out of office in 2009, which was something of a feat in a liberal enclave like Seattle, Gottlieb recalled. His defeat in the primary demonstrated the degree of alienation voters felt from a politician who once epitomized the Seattle liberal establishment.

"By naming Greg Nickels as an alternate representative at the UN," Gottlieb stated, "President Obama has essentially told America's 85 million gun owners that their firearm civil rights are in jeopardy. Nickels cannot be counted on to defend the Second Amendment because he would like to see it erased from the Constitution."

Related Stories:

Obama backs international gun control treaty

Obama's gun control plans center on South American treaty as an end-run around the Constitution