Anti-gun billionaire: 'We need more school shootings'

Seattle venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, who was one of the early investors in Amazon, has donated $1 million to the campaign for stiffer gun control in his home state.

It didn't take long for some progressives to exploit the tragic shooting at a Washington State high school last Friday, as they used it in an attempt to gain support for a ballot initiative requiring expanded background checks on all gun transfers in the state.

Within hours of the Oct. 24 shooting that claimed the lives of two students at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, one of the billionaire backers of the Nov. 4 ballot initiative posted a link to the story on his Facebook page with the caption, "We need more school shootings!!! Vote yes on Initiative 591."

Facebook post by Nick Hanauer

The posting by Nick Hanauer, a Seattle venture capitalist from a Democrat family, was excused as "sarcasm," according to gun-rights advocates in Washington. I-591 would prohibit background checks and has the support of the National Rifle Association. Hanauer is one of the top financial donors to the organization pushing I-594, a competing ballot measure that would require background checks on almost all gun transfers, even short-term loans between friends and family members.

The Facebook posting by Hanauer was removed sometime late Friday. Meanwhile, the news came Monday morning that a third Marysville student, 14-year-old Gia Soriano, had died overnight of her wounds at a hospital in Everett.

Hanauer's comment was just the latest attempt by anti-gun forces to make political hay off of someone's loss, said Dave Workman, a resident of North Bend, Washington, and a former NRA board member.

"It was on his Facebook page. It's gone now. He pulled it down," Workman said. "It's obvious that the anti-gunners constantly look for things like this to exploit, to move their agenda forward and, of course, their agenda is stiffer gun control."

Workman said if a pro-gun person had made such an insensitive comment in the wake of a school shooting, it would have been "front-page above the fold" in all of Washington's major newspapers and the top story on every major TV network's local affiliate.

Hanauer, one of the early investors in Amazon, has donated $1 million to the campaign pushing for passage of Initiative 594, which would establish a database tracking the movement of all firearms in the state.

The anti-gun Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence also couldn't resist the temptation to put in a plug for I-594 in the wake of the tragic shooting.

Dan Gross, president of the Brady Foundation, issued a statement Friday that read in part:

"If school shootings and other violent incidents at schools are to be stopped, the effort must begin at home. It starts with parents, who need to recognize the risks of guns in the home and make safer choices about gun access and storage. In addition, Washington voters can help make their state safer by voting for ballot measure 594 that will extend background checks to all gun sales and keep guns out of the hands of criminals and other dangerous people."

What's most despicable about these comments is that Initiative 594 would not have stopped the 15-year-old shooter, Jaylen Fryberg, from showing up at school Friday with his parents' .40 caliber pistol and firing at classmates, Workman said.

"No. There is absolutely no way that this shooting would have been stopped had I-594 already been launched, and to even suggest that is dishonest," Workman, who writes for the Seattle Gun Rights Examiner, told WND. "We've seen this pattern repeatedly, and there is no reason to expect that this is going to change."

Workman said Gross and Hanauer are simply following the advice of Chicago Mayor and former Obama aide Rahm Emanuel, who famously touted the philosophy that "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

"I would like to say that I'm surprised by this, but I'm not," Workman said. "This is an example of a pattern that has developed where anti-gunners have repeatedly seized on such events to advance everything on their agenda from background checks to waiting periods, to registration, and they know that none of the things they're advancing would have had any impact at all on the crimes being committed, and yet they trot these things out to take advantage while people are still grieving and mourning the losses. That, to me, is unconscionable."

Also this week, families of the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut will travel to Washington to campaign in support of I-594. That mass shooting also would not have been stopped by an expanded background check law.

Yet Washington residents continue to be swayed by the propaganda ads being funded by Hanauer, Bill Gates and several other billionaires.

According to the most recent polling data taken in mid-October, before Friday's school shooting, 60 percent of Washington residents said they were in favor of the I-594 background check initiative while 44 percent said they were in favor of the ban on state background checks offered by I-591.

Hanauer is 1 of 5 billionaires funding I-594

WND reported Oct. 12 that Hanauer was one of five billionaires including former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founders Gates and Paul Allen and Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, who are funding a massive advertising campaign in support of I-594. The five billionaires had contributed $1 million each to the cause, and the committee supporting I-594 had outspent those supporting I-591 by eight to one.

Watch Alan Gottlieb's presentation on the two Washington ballot measures below:

But Workman said the rank exploitation of a tragedy like the Pilchuck High School shooting could backfire on the billionaires' plan to bring tighter gun control to Washington state.

"Based on what I've seen, public reaction to the stories that have appeared, say in the Seattle Times, these kinds of comments are getting a backlash from people who are insulted if not outraged that the people behind I-594 would try to capitalize on this horrible tragedy in order to advance a political cause that has nothing to do with what happened to Marysville Pilchuck High School," Workman said. "I think you're already seeing signs of that backlash if you read the comments in reaction to these stories."

He said Hanauer's Facebook posting put a bad taste in the mouths of many Washingtonians.

"This business at Marysville and the reaction to that cynicism that we're seeing, that could just change the game a little bit," Workman said. "It does turn people off."

'The pitchforks are coming'

Hanauer provided a hint to the reason for his anti-gun stance when he penned an open letter this summer to his "fellow filthy-rich 0.01 percenters" in Politico magazine titled, "The Pitchforks are Coming for us Plutocrats." In that article, Hanauer expressed fear that America could devolve into revolution if historic levels of income inequality are not addressed.

Below is an excerpt from the article:

"Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

"And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.

"If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when."

Perhaps Hanauer's real concern is not pitchforks flying in his direction but 9-millimeter and .40-caliber ballistics.