(AP)
They’re part of student-led movement demanding tougher gun laws that started after the Parkland school shooting.
RELATED: Little town of Republic at the center of gun controversy[1]
Students with “We Won’t Be Next Seattle”[2] campaigned hard to get I-1639 to the ballot and had been celebrating its passage, until they heard about the position of a small town police chief in Eastern Washington.
“It’s totally against my oath of office, which is to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Washington state, and I will not enforce it,” Republic Police Chief Loren Culp declared just over a week ago.
Local “We Won’t Be Next” co-founder and Kamiak High School Senior Niko Battle was floored.
“When I saw that for the first time I thought we can’t let this stand. We can’t set a precedent, especially as student activists who spent countless hours fighting for this initiative, we can’t set a precedent that it’s okay for our leaders to say ‘you got the change that you were hoping for and that you were fighting for, but we’re still going to decide to slap you in the face and to not enforce it,'” Battle said.
Battle says not enforcing the law is a threat to the state.
“It’s critical to demand and to ensure that every elected official or every community leader enforces all parts of initiative 1639, unlike what the Police Chief of Republic, Washington Loren Culp is trying to do, because that rhetoric and that ideology, that ‘because I don’t agree with the law I don’t have to enforce it’ is something that is dangerous to the integrity of the
