Various gun prohibition lobbying groups use subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, wording to sway public opinion about firearms, to the point that blame for deadly violence involving guns is shifted from the perpetrator to the firearm.
For example, the Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility posts a “Gun Violence Fact Sheet” on its website. There, the reader finds this statement:
“Every year, 896 Washingtonians are killed by guns, a rate of 11.2 per 100,000 people.” Actually, these people are killed with guns, either by their own hand or at the hands of a killer. Firearms do not take lives on their own, as they are inanimate objects.
The figure is misleading, as it is as combination of suicides, homicides and accidental/negligent discharges. The Alliance acknowledges a few lines later that “69 percent of gun deaths in Washington are suicides.”
The Alliance notes, “More people are killed by guns than die in car accidents in Washington,” but this is only if all the gun-related deaths are combined. According to the state Department of Transportation, preliminary data showed that in 2022 there were 745 deaths resulting from crashes.
However, in 2022 in Washington, according to the most recent available data from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC), there were 394 actual murders. By combining the various data, the anti-gun lobby sublimely suggests all of the deaths are slayings.
The Alliance “fact sheet” also contains this statement: “Washington has the 40th highest rate of gun violence in the United States.” Translation, Washington is tenth from the bottom.
For some reason, the Alliance notes, “234 people have been fatally shot by Washington police since 2015,” as if this number is part of the problem of criminal misuse of firearms. It might be interpreted as a very subtle swipe at police use of deadly force against violent criminal suspects.
Elsewhere on its website, the Alliance posts this headline: “Washington State is a National Leader in the Gun Violence Prevention Movement.”
However, since the Alliance was formed in 2013, the number of murders in Washington state has gone dramatically up, not down. In 2013, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report for that year, Washington reported 155 murders including 86 involving firearms. By 2021, WASPC reported 325 murders. Since 2020, the FBI has been using a different platform for reporting crime in the U.S. and the newer National Incident-Based Reporting System is more complicated and far less user-friendly. As noted above, in 2022—the most recent year for which data is available—WASPC listed 394 murders in the state, an increase of slightly over 150 percent from 2013. According to WASPC, murder was up 16.6 percent in 2022 over 2021.
