Seattle Mayor Ed Murray blames guns for crimes committed by illegal aliens. (YouTube, Channel 90)
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
When liberal Seattle Mayor Ed Murray held a press event to rip President Donald Trump’s executive order on sanctuary cities, he was asked about a murder committed by an illegal alien about ten years ago at the University of Washington.
Murray, a perennial anti-gunner who previously served in the State Senate, responded, “The question is…are we finally going to do something about regulating guns in this country? He (Trump) brought up a series of parents who have lost children to people who were not documented. You know, how many times have I spent time with parents whose sons have been shot dead in this city?
“There is an issue of guns, not an issue of immigration.”
After the president announced his directives on immigration, mayors of several so-called “sanctuary cities” had fits. Murray was one of the more vocal.
At the press event in Seattle, Murray vowed to fight Trump’s directive in court to “insure…that the United States Constitution is not violated.”
That remark got the attention of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, who has a long memory regarding Murray’s history of gun control advocacy, pounced on the remark in a statement to the press. He recalled how Murray was embarrassed four years ago when, as a member of the State Senate in Olympia, he was the prime sponsor of a bill to ban so-called “assault weapons” that initially included a provision to allow warrantless annual searches of gun owners’ homes by sheriff’s deputies to see how “grandfathered” firearms were stored.
Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat exposed the problem to Murray’s embarrassment.
Westneat, who supports gun control, observed at the time, “I have been blasting the NRA for its paranoia in the gun-control debate. But…you can’t fully blame them, when cops going door-to-door shows up in legislation.”
Murray and his co-sponsors quickly removed the offensive tenet, but many believe it was only because he finally got caught trying to slip that provision into state law. The language was identical to at least two earlier bills that anti-gunners had tried to pass, but had failed to get momentum. Likewise, Murray’s SB 5737 died in committee.
“When it comes to violating the Constitution, Ed Murray has expert experience,” Gottlieb observed.
He asserted that Murray, a liberal Democrat, “would eviscerate the Second Amendment.” As Seattle’s mayor, Murray signed a “gun violence tax” into law in 2015, and the city was promptly sued by the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association, National Shooting Sports Foundation and two firearms retailers.
The city has also been sued by SAF and TGM senior editor Dave Workman over a Public Records Act issue regarding revenues from that gun and ammunition tax.
Murray’s timing could not have been worse. His press event came as reports were surfacing about the arrest and charging of five men in the December slaying of an eastern Washington woman. Jill Marie Sundberg, 31, was shot 13 times at a parking spot along the Old Vantage Highway near George, about 150 miles east of Seattle, in the Columbia basin.
Three of the men were charged with murder and two are being held as material witnesses, according to published reports. All are in this country illegally.
Then there was the infamous slaying of Kate Steinle in San Francisco two years ago allegedly by a recidivist illegal alien. The gun used in that crime had been stolen from a federal law enforcement officer’s vehicle. The suspect in that case, Juan Francisco Lopez-
The 2007 murder of Rebecca Griego by ex-boyfriend Jonathan Rowan on the UW campus has been directly linked to the city’s “sanctuary” policy. Rowan had been arrested for driving under the influence, but since Seattle Police are prohibited from running routine checks for citizenship status, he was cited and released. At the time of the murder, he was wanted by the police for questioning in a theft investigation and had also long overstayed a 90-day visa, so he was in the country illegally.
