Seattle Mayor Nickels is not only one of Bloomberg’s mayors against guns but is very active on his own. He believes he is above the state preemption law on firearms. He even hinted he believe his city should be considered as a state it in the meeting with him at work that I attended. After he answered my question he went on to say the population of Seattle was just as large as entire states were at the time the colonies became a nation and as such justification to be able to make laws just as freely as a state made sense. And beyond that he said he would ban guns from city property, including parks and other public areas, by executive order. When gun rights groups referred to him as wanting to be a king they were right.

His Majesty got a taste of reality in the primary election last week with some help from Seattle gun owners:

Seattle gun owners can take much credit for the ouster of anti-gun Mayor Greg Nickels in this week’s primary election, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said this morning following what amounted to a concession speech at his press conference.

Nickels came in third in the city’s “Top Two” primary, signaling that voters in Seattle were fed up with his bully pulpit style, and perhaps more than anything, his arrogance, said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. No single episode has better underscored that haughtiness than the mayor’s open defiance of Washington State law that denied him the authority to set up the city’s own restrictive gun laws.

“When the mayor announced last year that he would ban legally-carried firearms from city property when he knew it would be contrary to the state’s preemption statute,” Gottlieb recalled, “it made tens of thousands of Seattle gun owners furious. Nickels insulted their intelligence by promising to ban guns by executive order, which is the height of municipal contempt for the rights of citizens under the state Constitution. He literally threw away their votes.”

CCRKBA Projects Director Thomas McKiddie, a West Seattle resident, said he and his gun-owning fellow Seattleites had simply had enough of the mayor’s condescension toward their rights to be safe on city streets, in parks and on other public property.

“I don’t know a single gun owner in Seattle who voted for Nickels,” McKiddie said. “After he threatened an executive order, he lost the nerve to actually issue one because he knew he would lose that fight in court. Instead, he included gun prohibitions in use contracts for the Seattle Center and other venues. He knew a citywide ban would be unenforceable, and his ouster demonstrates that Seattle gun owners were having none of it.”

“We hope this sends a signal to Nickels’ successor,” Gottlieb observed, “that stirring the wrath of gun owners is a mistake. This week’s primary result in Seattle should stand as a warning to other mayors who signed on with New York’s Michael Bloomberg to trample the firearms rights of their constituents.

“Mayors are not monarchs,” Gottlieb concluded. “They are not above the law. Greg Nickels is going to have a long time to think about that, as he watches this election season from the sidelines.”

As near as I can tell from the other candidates websites here and here guns weren’t an issue in the campaign. My guess is they don’t want them to be an issue either. If they say nothing more about them that would be fine with me.