The “First Monday Experience” in Washington State

By Jeff Stewart, with Bob Anderson

The organizers of “First Monday 2000” in the state of Washington did not have the events go quite as they had planned, thanks to members of the Washington State Tyranny Response Team (WSTRT), and other dedicated pro-rights activists.

First Monday sponsored events in a number of venues in Washington, including Seattle, Tacoma, Pullman and Spokane. The Seattle events took place on Monday the 2^nd at Seattle University School of Law and the University of Washington School of Law and on Tuesday the 3^rd at the University of Washington Medical School.  Since the UW School of Law event included Joe Waldron of the Washington Arms Collectors as a panel discussion member, WSTRT chose to attend the Seattle University event on Monday, in order to maximize our coverage.

The first event at Seattle University took the format of a panel presentation and follow-up Q&A.  This was preceded by a brief address by L'Nayim Shuman-Austin, who emceed the event, and the viewing of a 30-minute “documentary” film narrated by actor Martin Sheen.  This film was titled “America: Up In Arms”.

The producers of the film provided the following synopsis:

“The film tells the stories of three families who have lost children to gun violence through unintentional shooting, murder and suicide. It includes moving footage from the Million Mom March and conversations with parents, doctors, law enforcement, legislators, youth, and others. The film will present the epidemic of gun violence in America and provide examples of successful activism by citizens from all walks of life.”

Our take? A typical anti-freedom fear-mongering propaganda fest.

Following the film we were treated to a series of 10-minute presentations by a panel of  “experts” on gun violence.  First to speak was Charles Lind, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for King County, Washington.

Mr. Lind was, in my estimation, by far the most reasonable and even-handed of the presenters.  He described the way in which the prosecutor’s office handles cases of gun violence.  He went into some detail on how the Prosecutor’s Office is cracking down on youth offenders, and youth gangs.  His talk detailed the efforts to curtail these incidents by taking a very hard-line approach to prosecuting youth offenders.  This seemed to irritate the next speaker, Ms. Simmie A. Baer of the Public Defender Association.  Ms Baer was not the sharpest tool in the shed, despite the fact that Washington Law and Politics recently named her “one of the best lawyers in the state”.  Her focus was primarily on punishing the evil guns responsible for the cases Mr. Lind is forced to prosecute.  She expounded at length on the injustice inherent in the current practice of prosecuting juvenile gun offenders as adults. (Poor babies.)  Next to address the admiring throng was Assistant Chief of Police John Pirak of the Seattle Police Department.  Asst. Chief Pirak struck this writer as a purely political sycophant of the smarmiest stripe.  He made reference to a recent incident which occurred in Seattle’s Pioneer Square district, in which a crowd of “200-300” rap music aficionados gathered outside a dance club well after closing.  In spite of the presence in the area of some 20 or more Seattle Police officers assigned ahead of time to control this potentially unruly gathering, 4 individuals were shot during a violent altercation.  To their credit, SPD managed to “capture” 2 of the offending handguns (after the fact).  We made note that we could not have better demonstrated the inability of police officers to protect citizens from violence.

Next up was the chief organizer of the event, the Executive Director of CeaseFire Foundation of Washington, Bruce Gryniewski.  Mr. Gryniewski began his monologue with a bit of “audience participation”, in which he asked all audience members to rise.  He then asked all those who had either been personally involved in an incident of gun violence, or who had a friend or family member so involved, to remain standing while all others sat back down.  This resulted in about half of the audience remaining on their feet.  This was his way of demonstrating the broad scope of the gun violence issue.  His speech was rife with all the hackneyed clichés with which the anti-freedom crowd is wont to attack our rights.  Among the malapropisms he used were:  “Do you really need an ASSAULT WEAPON to hunt deer?”  Mr. Gryniewski is evidently in a state of blissful ignorance concerning what is and is not an assault weapon… I need not go into laborious detail concerning the content of his speech; you can find examples of every word he spoke in the literature and websites of Handgun Control, Inc., the Violence Policy Center, the Million Misinformed Mommies, or (insert gun grabber organization of your choice here).

The final speaker was Mark Aoki-Fordham, a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.  Such a piece of work was Mr. Aoki.  He explained to us what a terrible misconception we had been living under, to whit the difference between individual rights, and collective rights, and how the Second Amendment falls into the latter category.  This provided one of the highlights of the evening when KABA member and WSTRT co-founder Bob Anderson took the floor as the first participant in the question-and-answer phase.  Bob began by commending Mr. Aoki and the ACLU for their successful efforts and tireless advocacy of the Bill of Rights, then asked,

“Is the Second Amendment the only place in the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and, for that matter, the Declaration of Independence where ‘the people’ doesn’t mean the people?” 

Mr. Aoki seemed unprepared for the question.  He squirmed and stammered for a few moments, then attempted an answer, which fell flat – even, it appeared, to the largely pro-“gun control” audience.  Bob then held the floor for several minutes, offering solutions to the problem of violence and abuse of firearms ranging from ending the “War on Drugs” to K-12 firearms safety instruction.  Surprisingly, the suggestions elicited some positive comments from several audience members at the reception, which followed the Q&A.

At this point, emcee L'Nayim Shuman-Austin began to look desperate - she kept looking to Bruce Gryniewski to help bail her out. No help there.  She finally spoke up, "In the interest of time, um, we'd like to, um, hear from some other members of the audience...” So, Bob politely acquiesced.  She called on another gentleman and lo and behold, he was another pro-rights activist (unaffiliated, for the time being, with WSTRT) who nailed the panel quite effectively on the issue of registration.

Following him was WSTRT member, Robert McKercher, who, following Mr. Gryniewski’s lead, engaged in some “audience participation” of his own. He asked everyone in the audience and on the panel who was between the ages of 17 and 45 to stand.  He then asked those who were older than 45 and under 63 years of age to stand, if they had ever served in the Armed Forces of the United States.  I was duly impressed when Assistant Chief John Pirak of SPD stood, as did Deputy Prosecutor Charles Lind and Ms. Shuman-Austin.  At this point Robert gleefully intoned, “welcome to the militia!” Mr. Gryniewski immediately sat down, with a flustered look on his face, turned to the still-standing L'Nayim Shuman-Austin and said, “I don’t have to be in the militia, do I?”  I took this opportunity to speak up with “aren’t you familiar with Title 10 of the United States Code?”  Mr. Lind then leaned over to the distraught Gryniewski and said, “He’s right, you know… Title 10…”  Mr. Lind admitted to us later that he was surprised at the content of the presentation. He said he was expecting it to be about addressing violence, not "gun control." 

By the end of our allotted time, a total of 5 questions were taken from the audience… and every person given the floor was one of US!  That’s right… not ONE question taken from the floor came from the intended audience.  After the questions were finished, Ms. Shuman-Austin looked ready to find a burrow to hide in.  Before leaving the auditorium, I managed to get to the podium, and give both Mr. Lind and Mr. Aoki copies of “The Unabridged Second Amendment”, (an interview by L. Neil Shulman of Professor Roy Copperud, America’s foremost expert on English language usage in which the meaning and intent of the language of the Second Amendment is revealed to mean exactly what it says) Stewart explaining that they need not resort to tortuous legal dissertations in order to understand what the Founder’s intent was… just read the sentence.

During the banquet, Bob and I, along with the other WSTRT members and other pro-2A attendees spent some 90 minutes in discussions with many of the audience members, with some degree of success in getting points across.

Day 2, the University of Washington Medical School

The second event we attended took place the following evening at the University of Washington.  Unbeknownst to us, this event was to be presented in an entirely different format than the first; this was to be a seminar format, no discussion or Q&A.  This made it somewhat more difficult to interject our objections and comments, though we were able to make ourselves heard, nonetheless.

This event took place at the University’s Medical School, and was billed as a “Gun Violence Policy seminar”.  It was quickly clear, however, that it was merely a thinly disguised “gun control” indoctrination session.  The speakers included Dr. McCormick, of the UW Medical Center, Dr. Fred Rivera, from the Harborview Medical Center Injury Prevention Research Program, Dr. Roy Farrell, of the Board of Directors of Washington Physicians For Social Responsibility (co-sponsors of the event) and a member of the Washington State Medical Association, a sociologist from Colombia (who expounded on the international ramifications of gun violence).

Dr. McCormick, a warm, sympathetic and clearly academic elderly gentleman spoke first.  He recalled, with heartfelt sorrow, the murder of a colleague who had been killed with a handgun by a failing medical student, who then turned the gun on himself.  Sadly, he blamed the gun, not the student.  Following Dr. McCormick, Dr Rivera took the podium.  He gave a slide presentation and lecture on the merits of “gun control” using the long since debunked “studies” of Dr. Arthur Kellerman, in which Dr. Rivera took part.  Dr. Rivera reeked of pompous superiority, a self-righteous windbag of epic proportions.  With few exceptions, everything Dr. Rivera said was a lie.  When he suggested that banning firearms would be an effective way to “end” gun violence, Bob asked, “Would that require repealing the Second Amendment?” His terse reply: “We’re not going to talk about that.”  So much for the free exchange of ideas.

Next up, Captain Lockbox, a.k.a. Dr. Farrell of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.  His presentation consisted of more bogus statistics on slides, and details of his involvement in the effort to pass the Child Access Prevention law (CAP).  This law aims to make it a felony for a gun owner to leave a firearm accessible to a child.  Several WSTRT members present attempted to interject at this point that the opposition to this law centers mainly on the refusal of proponents to write in exemptions for unusual circumstances, such as the theft of a firearm.  At this point, the crowd began to get somewhat surly, one audience member angrily rising to say, “We did not come here to listen to what you have to say!”  Bob Anderson politely replied, “All right, we are not here to disrupt the seminar.  We simply assumed that you are here with a genuine desire to seek a solution the problem of gun-related violence, as are we.  We simply want to ensure that you are getting the full story.”  Dr. John Pickens, of the University Medical Center, who organized the lecture, interjected, saying “There will be time for a discussion period after the presentations.” 

Dr. Farrell continued, explaining how the proposed law would require the use of lockboxes, trigger locks, and the like.  Toward the end of this exhortation, he pulled a Simplex-type pistol lockbox from beneath the podium, explaining, “One of these can be opened in 3 to 5 seconds, giving virtually immediate access to the firearm inside.”  As a matter of demonstration, he then proceeded to key the buttons on the lock, and turned the handle to release the lid.  Amazingly, it refused to open.  He fumbled with it for several seconds, resetting the lock and trying again.  When this second attempt failed as well, there arose from three WSTRT voices, as one, “BANG! YOU ARE DEAD!”  As he continued to fumble with the mechanism for another several seconds, WSTRT member Dean Fuller intoned “YOUR WIFE IS NOW BEING RAPED.”  After yet a third unsuccessful attempt, Dean again spoke: “NOW YOUR DAUGHTER IS BEING SODOMIZED!”   At this point, Dr. Farrell set the box on the podium, and finally managed to get it open.  I took this opportunity to say “You have just made our point for us, Doctor.” The audience was somewhat subdued, but to his credit, Dr. Farrell took this (for him) unhappy turn of events with a surprising amount of aplomb, immediately continued with his dissertation, showing the padding in the box, and the holes in the back of it which may be used to affix it to a wall.

Thanks for the demo, Doc.

Following “Captain Lockbox”, the Columbian sociologist (whose name was unfortunately not written down by your intrepid reporter) gave a brief presentation on the massive numbers of gun deaths in Latin American countries, Columbia and Brazil in particular.  He went on to note that his studies showed a marked improvement in these statistics in countries that did not have bothersome Constitutions that prevented their governments from instituting mass firearm confiscations.  While his conclusions were obviously delusional (a simple examination of the results of gun banning in England and Australia bear this out, of course), his recommended methodology met with resounding approval from the audience, and feelings of cold foreboding from yours truly.

Dr. Pickens rose, and rather than announcing the beginning of the discussion period, stated flatly “I think we’ll end this now, thank you for coming.”  We passed out flyers and informational handouts we had prepared, engaging as many audience members in conversation as possible before they ran from the room.

Several of the participants had positive comments to make, one girl, who had been sitting directly in front of us, going so far as to whisper under her breath “You know, I do want to end gun violence, but I do not want to lose my right to keep a firearm.” 

Score one for the good guys…

KABA NOTE:  It is with great appreciation that we publish stories like this, where our members and fellow liberty advocates get out into the public anti-self-defense forums and enlighten the misguided gun grabbers of the world.  Thank you, Jeff Stewart and Bob Anderson, and all of your local allies, for braving the tides of ignorance in order to affect positive change.  May your uplifting and inspiring story spark others to rise to the occasion and help save this nation.