The CD5 candidate’s extremism v. Carmela Conroy’s voice of reason
Former Spokane County prosecutor and career foreign service officer Carmela Conroy and Mr. Baumgartner are vying for the U.S. House seat to be vacated by Cathy McMorris Rodgers the end of this year. Choose carefully. If you wish to make sure that the next Las Vegas mass murderer has access to the “right” equipment for the job, Michael Baumgartner is your guy.
Surely Michael Baumgartner would rather it were known only to a select audience, but he is a 2nd Amendment extremist—and is proud of his voting record that proves the point. He is anxious to make sure that everyone can access the most efficient people-killing equipment legally available—the “bump stock”—a device that, in practical terms, converts a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun. Bump stocks came into public consciousness when, in 2017, a lone gunman firing from a 32nd floor hotel room in Las Vegas killed sixty and wounded over four hundred more defenseless concert goers—a grim lone-gunman record. (See P.S. below for bump stock regulatory background and more.)
Keep this bump stock background in mind as you contemplate this quote from Mr. Baumgartner from an interview he gave a couple of months ago (watch here starting at 5:08):
Let me say first on the bump stock ban I was in the senate when the Democrats brought that to the floor in the Washington State senate. I voted against it, ahhh. and did not support that, and did not support President Trump’s measure to ban bump stocks and was glad that the Supreme Court has overturned that because as we know the far left wants to take away ALL of our gun rights and every step they can get closer to that is all just part of their plan, their goal.
The “bump stock ban” Baumgartner is proud of voting against passed the Washington State Senate as ESB 5992 on February 27, 2018 by a vote of 31 in favor (Republicans and Democrats) to 18 against (all Republicans). Signed by the governor, the law is now part of the Revised Code of Washington (RCW 9.41.190) [the bold is mine].
(1) Except as otherwise provided in this section, it is unlawful for any person to:
(a) Manufacture, own, buy, sell, loan, furnish, transport, or have in possession or under control, any machine gun, bump-fire stock, undetectable firearm, short-barreled shotgun, or short-barreled rifle;
This bump stock prohibition still stands in Washington State as a perfect example of the “states’ rights” that Baumgartner otherwise promotes in the video and elsewhere. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal bump stock prohibition because it was an ATF regulation, rather than a U.S. Congress-passed law. Baumgartner, if elected this fall to the U.S. Congress, will work hard with other extremists to keep bump stocks and all manner of other military hardware as unregulated and available as possible. He will oppose passage of a federal bump stock ban—or any gun regulation whatsoever. Of course, he will drape that stance in 2nd Amendment absolutism while drumming up angst over an imaginary slippery slope.
Carmela Conroy, Baumgartner’s far better qualified opponent in the November election—as well as this gun-owning, shooting-sport-participating writer—stand for the sensible gun regulations that a majority of Americans want to see enacted.
Baumgartner’s YouTube interview from which his quote was drawn is a treasure trove of the far right extremism that lives beneath the shallow veneer of Baumgarnter’s “Aw, shucks” exterior. Both the interview setting and the interviewer are revealing. The setting is 3 Aces “Personal Security Operations Center” on Broadway in Spokane Valley. Click that link. “3 Aces” seems to be advertising something more like paramilitary training than personal security advice. (Shades of Matt Shea’s “Team Rugged?”) The interview is conducted by William Kirk, a lawyer who claims to specialize (and have exalted credentials in) both “gun law” and in “DUI Defense.” Researching Mr. Kirk is a tour of self-aggrandizement using glitzy website presentations. Mr. Kirk appears as the sole attorney and personality of two Washington west side organizations of self-proclaimed renown, Washington Gun Law and the Cowan Kirk Law Firm.
Let us work to elect Carmela Conroy as our Representative to the U.S. House this fall, not her far-right extremist opponent.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Bump Stock Background: On October 1, 2017, just seven years ago in the first year of Trump’s presidency, a lone gunman perched in a room on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel committed the deadliest mass shooting by one person in American history. Made possible by “bump stocks”, a device that essentially converts a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun, the shooter fired off more than a thousand rounds in just ten minutes into a crowd of concert-goers, killing 60, wounding at least 413 more and causing injuries to hundreds more in the resulting stampede. Ponder that.
The incident was so horrific that, in 2018, additionally spurred by the Parkland High School Shooting in February of 2018, Trump tweeted and even the NRA supported “additional regulations” around bump stocks. The ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco, and Explosives) heard the call, administratively reclassifying bump stocks as “machine guns,” thereby requiring registration and fees under the National Firearms Act of 1934.
Then earlier this year 2024 (thanks to the same six Supreme Court Justices responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade) the ATF regulation was struck down, the six Justices declaring that ATF had overstepped its statutory authority. Note two things: (1) This the same Supreme Court majority that McConnell and Trump brag about establishing and (2) this ruling does NOT prohibit either state or federal legislation that would regulate bump stocks. Nationally, now that the memory of Las Vegas and bump stocks is fading, there is zero chance of any regulation of bump stocks passing Congress until there is a substantial Democratic majority in both the House and Senate.