Gun Grabbers Play Race Card; Guns Blamed for Seattle Shootings

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Gun prohibition lobbying groups have evidently decided to play the race card, mixing messages for gun control with allegations of racism, while another fatal shooting in Seattle’s so-called “CHOP” zone is being blamed on guns, rather than on the perpetrators or the fact that far-left protesters forced police to abandon their East Precinct headquarters, and closed their zone to cops.

The Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a billionaire-backed gun ban group posted a blog entry June 26 on its website that said this:

“Attempts to oppress people of color, and Black people specifically, turned the gun lobby from a sporting organization promoting marksmanship and firearm safety to extremists intent on opposing commonsense firearm laws. Today, the gun lobby traffics in white supremacist messaging and consistently stokes fear about people of color in an attempt to drive gun sales.”

This came six days after Everytown for Gun Safety, the Michael Bloomberg-backed anti-gun lobbying group released an email blast over the name of Shannon Watts, founder of the anti-gun-rights Moms Demand Action attacking the National Rifle Association.

“The NRA’s leaders have yelled about needing guns to protect against tyranny for years,” the Watts message said. “Yet, when President Trump threatened to deploy the military to states across the country, the NRA was silent. While police and the National Guard have been brutalizing and tear gassing protestors, the NRA has not had a word to say about tyranny.

“That’s because the NRA and Donald Trump don’t have disagreements,” the note added. “Their inflammatory, racist rhetoric and their extreme ‘guns everywhere’ agenda are their joint priorities.”

This alleged racism might come as news to such notable NRA members as Niger Innis, Carl Rowan, Jr., Col. Allen B. West, Karl Malone, Prof. Robert Cottrol and if he were still alive, Roy Innis, late chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, and countless other members who are racial minorities.

The NRA has not responded to the allegations. The national gun rights organization is habitually demonized by gun prohibition lobbying groups which use NRA as a bogey man for fundraising efforts. It’s almost a reflex for gun control proponents to attack NRA and blame the group, while virtually ignoring the existence of other rights groups such as the Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

These new race-based attacks preceded another fatal shooting in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) zone, where a 16-year-old was fatally shot and a 14-year-old boy was seriously wounded by gunfire apparently from CHOP “security” in an early-morning incident. Both teen victims were black, an ironic fact considering the CHOP zone was ostensibly occupied by protesters with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Instead of calling for the disarmament of armed protesters within the seized upper Seattle neighborhood and a full police investigation, Socialist Councilwoman Kshama Sawant declared, “violence was happening on Capitol Hill and in other parts of the city long before the CHOP occupation was created by the movement and we should completely reject the false claims — claims that have no basis in statistical analysis — that the CHOP occupation and the movement was the reason for any of the violence,” according to the Seattle Times.

Seattle’s KUOW quoted Council President Lorena Gonzalez, who asserted, “This is, frankly, being caused by unscrupulous gun dealers who allow far too easy access to weapons that are then utilized by people in this way.”

The teens were in a Jeep that apparently entered the CHOP zone at about 3 a.m. Monday. Shooting immediately erupted, sending both to Harborview Medical Center. The older teen died and at this writing, the younger teen was in intensive care. It was the second fatal shooting in the zone in 9 days. On June 20, as earlier reported by AmmoLand, 19-year-old Lorenzo Anderson was gunned down by assailants still unknown

People involved in the occupation protest insist their closing off of the area and prevention of a police presence aren’t at fault. They’ve claimed the Jeep occupants opened fire and that gunfire was returned. The Seattle Times report said “several unidentified people” fired shots into the vehicle.

The Seattle Times quoted Antwan Bolar, a 43-year-old staying in a tent inside the CHOP, who contended, “The bloodshed you’re talking about has nothing to do with the movement. That’s people who would have been doing it in North Seattle or South Seattle anyways — it’s just concentrated here.”

But Seattle Times reporters dug this up:

“In 2019, SPD (Seattle police) investigated three homicides on Capitol Hill, including two in Cal Anderson Park, according to Seattle Times data, though they were spread months apart. No homicides had occurred in the neighborhood in 2020 until Anderson’s death.

“Two people have died and four were injured in four separate shootings in and around the occupation area over the past week and a half, not including the June 7 shooting of Dan Gregory by a man who drove into protesters before CHOP was formed.”

It’s not just gunfire that is giving the CHOP zone a bad reputation. Nor is it the fact that protesters stubbornly refuse to leave the area despite indications from Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, and published reports by local media, have indicated the CHOP protest was being evacuated.

The area appears to have attracted individuals who are just looking for trouble. Case in point was the attack on Fox News’ Dan Springer and his colleagues Monday morning as they were preparing for a live shot report.

According to Fox News, protesters began shouting vulgarities and Springer decided to cancel the shot. One protester allegedly “chest-bumped” Springer and threw coffee in his face and on his jacket. The Seattle Times confirmed the account.

And buried in the Times story is a report about a knife fight in Cal Anderson Park, where many of the protesters had been camping. This fight occurred not long before the fatal shooting Monday.

Playing the race card is right up there with name-calling as defensive postures that indicate a group’s other arguments have failed.

Some activists on social media have wondered if this new strategy isn’t an effort to counter all of the first-time gun-buying that has erupted over the past three months since the COVIE-19 pandemic panic began. This rush on gun shops has created a lot of new gun owners who might be rather zealous of their newly-re-discovered right to keep and bear arms, as reported earlier.

KOMO News, the Seattle-based ABC affiliate, interviewed retired Pierce County, WA sheriff’s sergeant Jesus Villahermosa, a use-of-force expert, who said re-opening the CHOP zone might require force. According to the report, Villahermosa believes negotiations between the protesters now occupying the CHOP are not accomplishing much.

“I really believe at this point, the protesters have really forced the hand and we’re going to have to use force,” Villahermosa told KOMO.

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Far-Left ‘Defund Police’ Efforts Fueling Gun Sales, Creating 2A Activists

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.