Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich: There is nothing in I-1639 for me to enforce, also the law is unconstitutional.
In a Facebook live press conference on Friday, the Sheriff made it clear I-1639 didn’t give law enforcement any laws to enforce. Take the safe storage aspect of the law, how would a Sheriff know if a person has their gun stored safely. There is nothing in the law that says a Sheriff has to enter a person’s home and physically check each weapon a person owns.
One reporter asked, what if a gun is stolen and used in a crime, what then? Well, the person who stole the gun committed a crime, that I can enforce. How would I know if the gun owner stored the gun safely after the fact? He or she could say they did. There is no definition of safe storage in the law.
“I-1639 is an unconstitutional law. I do not believe it will stand any constitutional testing at the state or the federal level,” The Sheriff added. “People need to understand that even though the citizens have passed this initiative, they didn’t change the constitution of the state of Washington or the constitution of the United States
“I have Democrats calling me telling me to do something, don’t enforce this law. I voted for it, but I didn’t know what was in it,” he said
The Sheriff said: This law did one thing and that was to create a definition. The definition of an Assault Rifle, which is every semi-auto rifle, even my 22lr plinker. The 22lr I use to go hunting with the last 40 years is now an Assault Rifle. Why is that important, well this is step 2, step 2 is ban all semi-auto rifles.
We already have background checks, it’s already illegal for felons to own firearms, I-1639 is redundant, the Sheriff said.
We all took an oath, uphold the U.S. Constitution and the laws thereof, uphold the constitution of Washington and the laws thereof. I-1639 VIOLATES both U.S. and Washington’s constitution, he said.
There’s no such thing as an assault knife, assault fist, assault rock, assault gun or an assault rifle. It’s just a made-up term to confuse and scare people who know nothing about firearms. The media parrots the term assault rifle because they know it will confuse and scare their readers.
The media is no longer interested in giving us factual information, journalism has now morphed into activism.
