BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today congratulated Republican Congressman-elect Mike Garcia for winning election over anti-gun-rights Democrat Christy Smith, and said the victory should serve as a warning to the gun prohibition lobby that their big bucks spending effort to fill Congress with anti-gunners is in trouble.

“There is a message in Mike Garcia’s victory,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “You can be a conservative, pro-Second Amendment candidate and win in California, a state dominated politically by anti-gun Democrats, in the legislature and governor’s office in Sacramento, and within the delegation to Capitol Hill.

“Smith’s campaign was supported by the gun control lobby,” he continued, “but dollars don’t vote, people do. And people are getting tired of far-left politics that trample on fundamental rights, especially the Second Amendment.

“Evidently,” Gottlieb observed, “the gun control crowd learned nothing from Michael Bloomberg’s disastrous presidential campaign, which revolved around his extremist gun control agenda. He spent more than $300 million and finished last, and that was among Democrat primary voters, nobody else. Now Bloomberg’s Everytown is planning to spend $60 million to flip Congress and state legislatures this fall, electing more anti-gunners.

“Garcia won on a campaign promoting American values, including the Second Amendment,” he added. “Those ideals seem foreign to the gun ban bunch, which thinks the constitution is for sale to people with the most money. Garcia’s victory this week proves otherwise, and it’s a warning that gun control is not the winning proposition far-left Democrats think it is.

“Garcia’s victory is also a message to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that her party’s gun grabbing agenda could cost them the House this fall,” Gottlieb stated. “She couldn’t even protect a Democrat seat in her own state, which should raise alarms with vulnerable Democrats in other districts all over the country.

“And Joe Biden should also be worried,” Gottlieb concluded, “because his anti-gun-rights agenda is not going to play well in the critical battleground states, where voters are tired of being attacked by politicians like Biden who want to take away their rights.”