– Dori writes…

Are you ready to have sheriffs in our state come knocking on your door and demanding entry with no warrant?

Democratic lawmakers are scrambling to explain why they signed on to a proposed bill that would have given that kind of power to the state over our private property rights and our lives.

It’s Senate Bill 5737 – a gun control bill that has been proposed in the legislature. Several listeners brought this bill to my attention late last week and over the weekend. And Danny Westneat’s column about it in the Seattle Times has gotten nationwide attention.

The bill would ban the sale of semi-automatic weapons. And, for those who already own such weapons:

In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing shall … safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection.

We have constitutional amendments to protect our right to keep and bear arms and to protect us against warrant-less searches. Now, in one stunning piece of legislation, lawmakers in our state wanted to trample on both of those rights.

Amazingly, when contacted about their support of this unconstitutional proposed law, members of our state senate claimed ignorance.

One of my listeners contacted Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles – she wrote:

“It came to my attention that there had been an error in the preparation of the bill relating to including the language permitting a sheriff to inspect the homes of assault-weapon owners which is not what I understood to be in the bill. If I had known that it was, I would not have signed on as a sponsor. Of course I should have read the bill in its entirety prior to signing onto it; however, I received a briefing on it without mention of the warrantless search language.”

So, the senator signed on as a bill sponsor without reading the bill??

Danny Westneat got similar responses from the senators he contacted.

Adam Kline said he did not know the bill authorized police searches because he had not read it closely before signing on. “I made a mistake,” Kline said. “I frankly should have vetted this more closely.” The prime sponsor, Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, also condemned the search provision in his own bill, after I asked him about it. He said… that it’s probably unconstitutional.

So the sponsors of a major piece of legislation claim they didn’t know what was in the bill.

There are only two possibilities here:

1) The senators knew exactly what they were signing onto – and were hoping to sneak through an unconstitutional piece of legislation. That would be a frightening disregard of their responsibility to uphold our state’s and nation’s constitution.

Or…

2) They truly were willing to sponsor a bill without having any idea what was in it – an equally frightening act in its sheer recklessness and irresponsibility.

Either way, we have put control of our state in the hands of some really dangerous people.