Group Aims To Roll Back Gun Controls Alliance’s Second Initiative Would Eliminate Foster Parenting By Gays

The Citizen’s Alliance of Washington filed initiatives to the people Monday to roll back gun restrictions and ban adoption or foster parenting by gay people.

“We take on the battles no one else wants to dirty their hands with,” said alliance political director Steven Mosier. “These initiatives are controversial, but we will do them anyway.”

The group, based in Ariel, Wash., has until July 7 to gather 181,667 valid signatures of registered voters to qualify the measures for the November ballot.

The gun initiative would remove gun permit regulations, fees and taxes and remove waiting periods for the purchase of guns.

It also would prohibit forced registration of firearms and block state enforcement of federal anti-gun laws and regulations.

The right to keep and bear arms is a “natural right” that can’t be subjected to license and permit requirements, said Sam Woodard, head of the alliance.

Mike Garner of Washington Cease Fire, a gun control group, said he thinks Washington residents favor more, not fewer, restriction on guns.

His group expects to file an initiative shortly to impose tighter gun control measures, including a blanket ban on the manufacture, sale or ownership of any type of assault weapon.

Washington Cease Fire also wants to require licenses for the use of firearms - just as with cars - and to require gun owners to register their handguns.

The initiative also would raise the age of legal ownership for any type of gun to 21.

“We’ll see who’s closer to what the public wants,” Garner said.

Meanwhile, Hands Off Washington, a grass-roots civil rights group, already is organizing against the anti-gay measure.

The group has chapters in every county in the state, and is beginning a voter education effort against the initiative, according to Robert Harkins, a spokesman for Hands Off.

“Voters of this state don’t support legalized discrimination and that’s what this is - just another angle on discrimination against a particular group.”

The initiative would not break up existing families parented by homosexuals. But it would forbid any more such families being formed through adoption or foster parenting.

The Citizens Alliance of Washington pushed an anti-gay rights initiative last year, but was unable to gather enough signatures to get it on the ballot.

Woodard said he hopes his two proposed initiatives will stand a better chance this year. He said he’d seek help for the gun initiative through the existing network of gun rights groups and gun clubs.

And he hopes to build on the base of about 20,000 alliance supporters and network of alliance chapters in 12 counties cultivated during last year’s campaign, Woodard said.

The group will not use paid signature-gatherers, Woodard vowed.

“We are a citizen organization. If there isn’t enough support to get the signatures, so be it. But this isn’t a commercial effort.”

Other initiatives filed Monday included:

Give citizens the right to file initiatives at the federal level.

Allow teachers to set up their own schools and make the state give those schools and private secular schools money based on the number of students.

Make the state put abandoned, abused or neglected children either in relatives’ homes or state-administered facilities instead of foster homes.

Roll back property tax valuations to 1993 levels and limit annual valuation increases.