9th In the Nation for Strict Gun Laws, Yet Washington Thugs Still Get Guns

Buried five paragraphs into a story published by Cascade PBS/Crosscut regarding so-called “gun violence” in Washington is the acknowledgment the state is rated 9^th strictest in the nation for its tough gun laws, yet there’s a significant problem with teens packing hardware.

It’s against the law, everybody knows it, and therefore, no new law is going to change the situation.

Perhaps the answer to this problem is found in a report from WTAE News, quoting Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, a leading gun rights organization located coincidentally in Bellevue, one of the state’s largest and most vibrant cities.

“At the end of the day, the stricter laws do not seemingly impact individuals’ unlawful use of firearms,” Kraut said.

How this common-sense reality continues to elude the gun prohibition crowd is one of the mysteries of life, one might observe. Washington’s homicide data over the past ten years confirms Kraut’s observation.

In 2014, the Evergreen State reported 172 murders, including 94 involving firearms, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report for that year. In 2023, the state reported 376 slayings, according to data from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

In November 2014, Washington voters passed gun control Initiative 594, following a $10.2 million campaign largely financed by wealthy Seattle-area elitists. It required so-called “universal background checks” with some exceptions. In 2015, the Seattle City Council adopted a special gun and ammunition tax to reduce so-called “gun violence.” In 2018, Washington voters passed gun control Initiative 1639, which placed severe restrictions on so-called “assault weapons,” included a definition of so-called semiautomatic “assault rifles” and created other restrictions. In 2022, the state legislature banned “large capacity magazines. In 2023, the legislature banned so-called “assault weapons.” Yet, murders have more than doubled in the state!

Kraut had it absolutely right, according to the WTAE narrative: The idea is that criminals will operate outside the legal system either way, and the new laws will not stop them. At the same time, the laws will actually punish well-meaning citizens who attempt to follow the rules.

“Ultimately, the criminal acts of some should not allow for the destruction of the right of many,” Kraut told WTAE.

Perhaps at the root of this problem is one of transference, shifting blame from the perpetrators of violent crime to the weapons they use. In this case, the gun prohibition lobby years ago came up with the term “gun violence,” and the media grabbed it like a magnet.

See how the Cascade PBS report described the problem: “In 2022, over 48,000 people died from gun violence —  an average of 132 people a day, or one death every 11 minutes — according to a report by the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University…Youth ages 1 to 17 made up 2,526 of those deaths.

“In 2022,” the narrative continues, “guns were a leading cause of death among children and teens, causing more deaths than car crashes, overdoses or cancer, the report found. The average was seven young people dying every day from firearms, which accounted for 30% of all deaths among teens aged 15-17.

“Black youth also experienced higher rates of gun violence: More than half (55%) of all Black teens ages 15-17 who died in 2022 were killed by a gun,” the report said.

Nobody ever died from “gun violence,” which is not a communicable disease. It’s a manufactured term. There is “violent crime,” much of it involving people misusing guns, which they usually shouldn’t have and frequently possess illegally, in violation of existing laws.

Guns are not a “cause of death.” Bad people misusing guns are a known cause of death for their unfortunate victims, but instead of holding these people fully and individually responsible, the gun ban crowd chooses to demonize firearms. “Gun violence” also encompasses self-defense, negligent/accidental death and suicide. The term essentially is a stacked deck against firearms and their lawful owners.

The Cascade PBS story did note, “Children under 18 access guns in many ways. One way is stealing firearms that aren’t secured properly. Another is to access the supply of untraceable ‘ghost guns’ or modify guns into machine guns through 3D printers.” The latter part of this statement appears ludicrous, suggesting a gross misunderstanding of the 3D printer, and the term “ghost guns” relates to the use of kits to construct firearms via home gunsmithing because they lack serial numbers.

The story also revealed that in King County—Washington’s most populous and politically bluest— “about 100 students were convicted of a felony” and all of them involved a firearm.

Seattle police frequently reveal whether guns they recover during criminal investigations are stolen, but often that fact is only found out by reading through charging documents if they involve cases outside of Seattle. It would be helpful if every case involving a stolen firearm were reported to and by the media.

Maybe what Alan Gottlieb at the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has said repeatedly bears more attention.

“At this point,” Gottlieb said last year, “it is fair to ask what good has any of these laws accomplished? These gun control measures have only helped make people less safe, and it should be clear to voters they’ve been deceived by the gun prohibition lobby…

“In private business,” he added, “if something repeatedly doesn’t work, the plan is scrapped and the company tries something else. If the people responsible refuse to let go, they might be fired. But the anti-gun crowd invariably doubles down, only making things worse. It is time to hold these people accountable, and for the Legislature to acknowledge that gun control extremism has been an abject failure. Restrictions created by I-594 and I-1639 can legally be repealed, along with (Attorney General Bob) Ferguson’s 2022 ban on magazines and (last) year’s ban on so-called ‘assault weapons.’ Washington citizens deserve better and it is time for a change of direction.”

Ultimately, this debate has never been about ridding society of violent criminals. It is about ridding U.S. society of firearms, a proposition which runs headlong into the Second Amendment.

About Dave Workman