Pro-Gun Activists Defend Law that Armed Seattle Mass Shooter

On May 30, 2012, Ian Stawicki walked into Cafe Racer in Seattle, Washington and shot five people,killing four: Joe Albanese, 52; Drew Keriakedes, 49; Kimberly Layfield, 38; and Donald Largen, 57. Fleeing the cafe, Stawicki then confronted Gloria Leonidas, a 52-year-old married mother or two, and beat her physically before shooting her in the head, killing her. Later that day, police confronted Stawicki in West Seattle. As they approached him, Stawicki knelt on the ground and shot himself in the head, taking his own life.

Shortly after the shooting it was revealed that Stawicki had obtained a concealed handgun permit in the state of Washington in August 2010 and legally purchased at least six handguns. This was despite a lengthy history of violence that included prior arrests for assault, domestic violence, and unlawfully carrying a weapon. Stawicki's family also revealed that he had a long history of mental illness. Stawicki suffered from delusions. He told his girlfriend he was married and the father of six. He told others he was a member of a CIA death squad. But the family never pushed to have him committed because they never heard him threaten to hurt himself.

The family did attempt to have Stawicki's concealed handgun permit revoked. When they contacted law enforcement, however, "the response to [them] was, there's nothing we can do, he's not a threat to himself or others, or we haven't had a report of it, or we haven't had to pick him up—call us when it's worse." Law enforcement wasn't simply being indifferent. They were powerless to act. The "Shall Issue" permitting law in Washington, written by the National Rifle Association (NRA), prevents the state from denying a concealed handgun permit to anyone who meets a basic set of criteria. And because Ian Stawicki had never been involuntarily committed nor convicted of a felony or misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, he met those criteria.

That a dangerous mentally ill man was allowed to retain his guns and carry permit despite these warnings is apparently of no concern to pro-gun activists, who came to the defense of the state's gun laws immediately after the tragedy. Dave Workman, the communications director for the Washington-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and a former member of the NRA Board of Directors, had the following to say about Ian Stawicki:

I don't know that there's anything you can do in these situations. We can't treat him like a child, he's got his own life to live and he can make his own mistakes no matter how horrific those mistakes turn out to be.

Workman's boss agreed with him about Stawicki's "mistake." Alan Gottlieb, a convicted felon who petitioned the federal government to have his "gun rights" restored, wasn't focused on the innocent lives that Stawicki took in the wake of the shooting. He seemed to have his own questionable history in mind, telling KING 5 News: "If you did that here in Seattle, you'd have a chief who gave out no gun permits. If it becomes discretionary, then people who deserve guns won't get them."

Workman and Gottlieb were certainly not alone. Keith Milligan, an Election Volunteer Coordinator with the NRA-ILA and author of the pro-gun blog "Shall Not Be Questioned, made it clear to us that he was concerned about individuals like Ian Stawicki being deprived of "life, liberty or property" and "due process." The lives and liberty of those innocent Americans Stawicki killed in cold blood? Milligan didn't mention it...

"Melvin Udall," a pro-gun activist from Virginia, concurred with Milligan, complaining, "So the precedent going fwd is GOV must deprive ALL ppl of life,liberty,pursuit IN CASE one might deprive others?" One? Udall seemed unphased by the fact that Stawicki is now at least the 20th concealed handgun permit holder to have committed a mass shooting since May 2007.

Pat Watson" (AKA "Hazmatpat") of Minnesotans for Firearms Safety Tweeted at us, "did he have a criminal record? Any reason to deny him his rights prior to crime? Otherwise you're talking #MinorityReport stuff!" Minority Report? Watson apparently neglected to read about Stawicki's criminal record, or review the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in D.C. v. Heller, which stated that "concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the [Second] Amendment [and] state analogues." Later, Watson told another Twitter user that if Stawicki was "not safe to be walking around, then prosecute!" For what? He didn't say. But apparently that wouldn't violate his "rights" like, say, preventing him from legally carrying a gun in public despite abundant evidence he was mentally ill and violent.

Finally, Ken Soderstrom, a pro-gun activist from Greenville, North Carolina, decided to just blame Stawicki's victims for getting shot. "We know he was a regular [at Cafe Racer] and knew those in the cafe wouldn't be armed," Soderstrom told us. "Defenselessness promotes violence." How simple. It was their fault for not arming themselves against their fellow citizens in a place they went to relax and enjoy the company of others.

After the shooting, Ian Stawicki's brother would say, "It's no surprise to me this happened. We could see this coming." But pro-gun activists have warned us that preventing people who are clearly dangerous from arming themselves and carrying guns in public is unacceptable, no matter what the ultimate body count is.

Meet a Pro-Gun Activist: Karl Hadley

In a universe of pro-gun activists that love to harass, intimidate and threaten Americans who call for stronger gun laws, perhaps no single activist is more aptly nicknamed than Karl Hadley, AKA “Kaveman.”

Hadley, a 40-year-old resident of Corvallis, Oregon, is well known to those in the gun violence prevention movement as the co-author of the blog “Days of Our Trailers” (http://daysofourtrailers.blogspot.com/). There—along with co-blogger Roy Kubicek (an Illinois militia member who goes by the screen name “Thirdpower”)—Hadley launches endless personal attacks on gun violence survivors and others engaged in the fight to reduce gun violence in America. Hadley and Kubicek pride themselves on being “the bane of hoplophobes everywhere” (“hoplophobe” being an imaginary term made up by former NRA board member Jeff Cooper to describe those with a supposedly "irrational" fear of firearms).

Normally, Hadley’s attacks wouldn’t raise many eyebrows here at CSGV, but certain comments he recently left at one of CSGV staffer Ladd Everitt’s blogs surpass even his “standard” in terms of profanity, crudeness, and viciousness.

On October 24, 2011, Ladd posted a blog at Waging Nonviolence entitled “The Racist Charge.” The blog dealt with accusations by pro-gun activists that gun control was “racist,” based on some very flimsy suppositions.

Hadley jumped in with a series of ugly comments on the blog, including this one:

"Hey Laddie, have you consulted with your mommy about the hard majic of black cock?

She sure does like sucking her own shit off it.

Don't tell your dad."



He also made some not so thinly-veiled threats, by suggesting he could post Ladd’s home address and even the location at which his wife works:



This is nothing new for “Kaveman.” Earlier this year, he celebrated the threatened posting of the home address of Joan Peterson, a gun violence survivor from Minnesota (Joan’s sister was shot and killed by her husband three years into divorce proceedings) in a blog entitled, “The Most Dangerous Game.”

There is certainly concern that Hadley could back up these threats. He has bragged of owning an arsenal of firearms and other military-style equipment (e.g., grenade launchers), is permitted to carry a concealed handgun in public in Oregon and 15 other states, and brags of serving with a paramilitary citizen’s militia in Oregon. He had at least one felony arrest in April 1994, when he was charged with manufacturing and/or dealing a controlled substance. And he is well-tied to other pro-gun activists nationwide who regularly spew venom at Americans who disagree with them about gun laws. For our part, CSGV promptly reported Hadley’s recent comments to law enforcement authorities.

But perhaps the most disturbing of all our recent discoveries about “Kaveman” is that he and Roy Kubicek are treated as credentialed media by the NRA at their annual conventions. It’s a disturbing statement about how extreme today’s pro-gun movement has become.

Pro-Gun Activists Fantasize About Brutally Killing Young Black Men

It’s no secret that pro-gun activists like to fantasize about using their guns to take down “bad guys.” As author and concealed handgun permit holder Dan Baum wrote in an August 2010 article for Harper’s magazine, “Anyone who tells you he has no fantasy life constructed around his gun either has been packing it for as long as he’s been watching television or is flat-out lying.” Speaking from experience, Baum says that firearm training classes in modern America are “less about self-defense than about recruiting us into a culture animated by fear of violent crime.”

For decades, the primary target of these fantasies has been young black men. Recall longtime NRA Board Member Jeff Cooper, who voiced the feelings of white gun-toting males throughout the pro-gun movement when he (in)famously wrote in 1991, "Our men in the Los Angeles area tell us that the radical rise in the murder rate in the L.A. basin should be viewed with due reference to the Good Riddance factor ... A certain amount of subjective guesswork is involved, of course, but the consensus is that no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society. These people fight small wars amongst themselves. It would seem a valid social service to keep them well-supplied with ammunition."

While the current-day crop of pro-gunners might not be as brash and candid as Cooper, the violence-fueled, racially-tinged day-dreaming remains the same. Consider the July 1, 2011 edition of the "VCDL Update," the e-newsletter of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a radical pro-gun group that seeks to eradicate all existing gun laws (including background checks on gun purchasers).

In the newsletter, VCDL President Philip Van Cleave points members to a June 26, 2011 article by Gabe Suarez, who fancies himself a "Professional Personal Combat Consultant" in "Arizona Territory." The article, entitled, "The Flash Mob Attack—How to Defend?” promotes a bizarre conspiracy theory about "flash mob events" in which hordes of "urban thugs" converge on innocent whites to beat and rob them while yelling things like "Kill Whitey!" Suarez describes four such "events," but fails to provide any links to the original source material to confirm that they actually happened.

That doesn't stop him, however, from telling readers—in graphically violent terms—how to kill black teenagers. "If you cannot avoid," he instructs, "attack...brutally and viciously." And there's more:

Stab the first man deep and hard in his face and move to the next guy and repeat the exercise. Do the same to anyone within reach. When their buddies reel back, screaming in horror and pain, holding their bloodied faces with eyeballs hanging out, it will create hesitation. Use that time to disengage. If you have a pistol, please make sure it is a modern high capacity weapon with a couple of spare magazines in your belt. The Suarez International company gun, a Glock 17 with three magazines, yields a sum total of 52 rounds. Figure three rounds per man, and you can reduce an angry mob of panga swinging killers into a fleeing group of bloodied bad guys. Draw it and yell, "Get The F*** Back!" If they do, run away. If they do not, shoot the first man in the face. The rest will take care of itself.

A panga, for those who are not familiar, is an African weapon similar to a machete.

During the same week that Van Cleave and the VCDL were sharing this reading material with their friends, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence received the following short email from pro-gun activist "John Jackson":

I want guns in all houses because you wacko people don't want to have the death penalty and you let all these thugs run loose. So if another drug dealer gang Banger gets killed its less money from our taxes."

Jeff Cooper, who passed away in 2006, would have been proud...