New Study Reinforces Reports About Washington Gun Control Failure

The Tacoma, Washington News Tribune is reporting that while crime rates nationally are decreasing, Evergreen State crime has increased, and now Washington is the eighth-most dangerous state in the country, according to a new analysis of data by the California-based Simmrin Law Group.

The report lends credence to stories published by Ammoland News and TheGunMag (formerly GUN WEEK), an online news publication owned by the Second Amendment Foundation, that violent crime has gone up as the state ratcheted down on the rights protected by the Second Amendment and Article 1, Section 24 of the state constitution.

Incredibly, Washington gets an “A-” on the Giffords gun control scorecard, while the Everytown for Gun Safety gun prohibition lobby group brags that Washington is “#9 in the country for gun law strength.” Evidently, both groups need vision examinations.

As Ammoland reported two months ago:

“Since Washington began adopting these increasingly stricter gun laws, the number of homicides statewide since 2014 has doubled (2014-172, 2022-394) and specifically in Seattle, homicides have tripled (2014-23, 2023-73). The message from Second Amendment advocates is clear: What gun control proponents have imposed has accomplished nothing, perhaps even less than nothing, considering the body counts.”

According to the News Tribune, the Simmrin Law Group studied data from the FBI and National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). On their website, Simmrin explained, “We analyzed crime data from the FBI and National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), evaluating ten specific crime categories. By assigning weights to each type of crime, we then applied a safety score out of 100, revealing America’s 10 safest and most dangerous states.”

Washington-based gun prohibitionists and anti-gun Democrat lawmakers have been pushing increasingly restrictive gun control laws since the passage of Initiative 594 in November 2014. That measure was bankrolled by the billionaire-backed, Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility, along with money from billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Their $10 million advertising campaign simply out-spent gun rights organizations.

Four years later, in 2018, the Alliance was back again with Initiative 1639, a measure aimed at restricting so-called “semiautomatic assault rifles.”

Then, in 2022, anti-gun Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee and Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson (now running to succeed Inslee in November) pushed legislation to ban so-called “large-capacity magazines.” Inslee signed the measure into law, which has recently been declared unconstitutional by a Cowlitz County Superior Court judge.

Last year, Inslee signed legislation banning the future sale, import, manufacture and purchase of “assault weapons.” That law is also being challenged in federal court by the Second Amendment Foundation and others.

As reported by the Centralia Chronicle, “According to the FBI crime report, between 2020 and 2022, the rate of violent crime in the U.S. decreased from 398.5 incidents per 100,000 people to 380.7 incidents per 100,000 people, while the rate of violent crime in Washington has increased from 293.7 incidents to 375.6 incidents, an 81.9 rate increase.”

The larceny/theft rate in Washington is among the highest in the nation, according to the Simmrin study. While larceny and theft may not specifically be violent crimes, murder, assault and other crimes seem to frequently lead evening news broadcasts.

The timing of this report could become a key issue in the state’s gubernatorial campaign. Former Congressman and King County Sheriff Dave Reichert is considered the most formidable of two Republican candidates to defeat Ferguson, who is also competing with Democrat State Sen. Mark Mullet for his party’s nomination. The other Republican in the race, Semi Bird, a one-time school board member in the Tri-Cities area of south-central Washington, actually got the support of the state Republican Party convention in Spokane earlier this month. Reichert withdrew his name from consideration for the party’s endorsement, asserting the process was in “disarray” and the convention was “chaotic.”

However, it is Reichert who came out of retirement and into the race with his law enforcement record who stands to make the most of this devastating Simmrin report.

SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb has repeatedly called Washington gun control an “abject failure” and the homicide body counts back that up.

There is no small irony in the fact that self-promoted gun control proponent David Hogg, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, when a mass shooting occurred there on Feb. 14, 2018. He co-founded a youth gun control effort, which was quickly absorbed by the gun prohibition lobby and now appears at various speaking events, including on scheduled in Seattle on May 5. This event is being co-hosted by Democrats and the Alliance for Gun Responsibility as a fundraiser. The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, a national grassroots gun rights group chaired by Gottlieb, chided Democrats about this a few days ago.

“How much money from this event will go to anti-gun Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s campaign to be the next governor,” Gottlieb wondered in a statement to the media. “How much will help fund state legislative campaigns for anti-gunners? Will any of this money be used to promote laws to lock up violent criminals?”

There has been no response from Democrats or the Alliance.

About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.