By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Three people died and six others were wounded in what Seattle officials are calling a “mass shooting” at a hookah lounge early Sunday morning in the city’s Mount Baker area, bringing the total number of murders this year to 47.
With more than four months remaining in the year, the body count is likely to go up, perhaps approaching the record of 69 set in 1994, according to the Twitter page Seattle Homicides.
According to KOMO News, the local ABC affiliate, the dead included two men, aged 22 and 32, and a 30-year-old woman, who died after being transported to the hospital.
Democrat Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell issued a statement declaring he will continue to partner with state legislators in his long running effort to repeal Washington State’s 40-year-old firearms preemption statute, first adopted in 1983 and strengthened in 1985.
At least six other people were injured.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms—coincidentally based in nearby Bellevue—accused Mayor Harrell of exploiting the tragedy to advance his crusade against the preemption law.
“Mayor Harrell reminds us he is ‘partnering’ with state lawmakers to ‘end state preemption over firearms’ so the city can adopt policies which, experience tells us, will only impact law-abiding citizens and not prevent a single tragedy,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Bruce Harrell was on the city council in 2015 when they hastily adopted the city’s notorious tax on gun and ammunition sales. In the years since, homicides have more than doubled in Seattle, the gun tax revenue has never come close to the forecast and the mayor and his allies continue blaming guns when they should be blaming the people misusing those guns.
“Mayor Harrell seems to forget that Seattle did adopt a policy—the gun tax—on the promise it would help prevent gun-related violence and the past eight years have shown it to be a total failure,” he added. “Instead of talking about getting guns off the street, how about focusing on getting criminals off the street?”
KOMO is running an opinion poll asking whether respondents “believe your elected leaders’ policies have led to an increase in crime?” The vote has been running 94-95 percent in the “Yes” column and “5-6 percent in the “No” column.
According to KOMO, Seattle police investigators recovered five guns at the crime scene. Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz told reporters the number of shootings this summer in the city is down, but the number of shots fired at each incident is up.
