Lake Wilderness Park

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Yesterday, I was at this park for a picnic for the Mariners employees. I thought this sign would be of interest.

Maple Valley is just north of Covington.

I will be contacting the City of Maple Valley on Monday AM.

This is a really nice park and would be a good site for a P I C N I C.


This is what I intend to send.

Saturday the 26[suP]th[/suP] of July, I visited Lake Wilderness Park. I must say that is a beautiful venue. However, I was disappointed by the wording of the sign posted at the park entrance.

By excluding firearms, your cited city ordinance O-030232, is in direct conflict and in violation of Washington State Law.

Article 1 section 24 of the Washington State constitution states "The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired". Further, RCW 9.41.290, states "Cities, towns, and counties or other municipalities may enact only those laws and ordinances relating to firearms that are specifically authorized by state law……Local laws and ordinances that are inconsistent with, more restrictive than, or exceed the requirements of state law shall not be enacted and are preempted and repealed."

Please consider this letter as a formal request to realign your ordinance to comply with the state constitution and law.

Comments?

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The bad part about all this is that the people we elect and who then swear to uphold the Constitution ad all law are doing this stuff. It's a pretty bad commentary on the honesty of the vast majority of politicians.

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I believe that in the strict letter of the law, the intimidation caused by the fireams restriction, could be prosecuted under title 18 sec 242, IF there resulted in harm resulting from the depravation of right to carry. Realisticlly, the US attorney would not look at just the intimidation factor. I has been my experience as a federal agent, the US atty has a threshold to cross before prosecuting any case.

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Until the 2nd amendment is incorporated onto the states, it's not a civil rights violations insofar as federal law is concerned. Good news that we'll have a yay or nay on incorporation within the next 6 months.

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Lonnie,

IS there anything we can do as indivuals to help make sure this happens? I didnt know about this issue. Do you have a link?

Thanks

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That must be an older sign. The appropriate code is now MVMC 7.05.050. It is kind of a funny read as they "It is unlawful for any person to carry a firearm without the appropriate concealed weapon permit."

I don't recall them having the authority to word their code that way especially since you do not need a permit to Open Carry.

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Trigger Dr., you're better off telling them it's in their best interest to change the wording rather than telling them they need to be in-line with state law.

Emphasize that having wording like that could end up in unlawful detainments, unlawful arrests, and lawsuits that they certainly don't want. By simply changing the wording to match state law, they don't risk such financial and PR problems.

Trust me, the city attorney will help push this through right-quick with wording like that... the reason being, then there's a record of the city being "on notice" that this could be a problem and any issue that comes up afterwards then looks like negligence on their part.

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I gues in the case of open carry, the "appropriate" concealed weapon permit would be "none". Maple Valley contracts with King County Sheriff to provide law enforcement.

I wouldn't worry too much about it becoming an issue, but I agree the wordig should be changed.

I think the parks should just make the wording on these signsNo discharge of Firearms, that would certainly be within the law and probably what they really are concerned with in the first place.