By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The city of Seattle has reportedly reached a milestone, but nothing to celebrate, after setting a new homicide record with 70 slayings so far this year, one more than the previous record of 69 set in 1994.
According to KING5 News, the local NBC affiliate, the grim record was set with the death of a June stabbing victim in West Seattle. The “X” site “Seattle Homicide,” which tracks murders in the city and is not connected to the Seattle Police Department, likewise put the number of slayings at 70.
Reacting to the news, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms issued a blistering statement critical of restrictive gun control laws passed in recent years with the promise they would result in less “gun violence.” The group said gun control laws adopted in recent years have been a “dismal failure” and should be repealed.
“Seattle, and the whole of Washington State, is proof positive that passing laws which only impact honest gun owners accomplish nothing to reduce violent crime,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “We warned people in 2014 that Initiative 594 would not prevent murder or mayhem, and we were right. We told Seattleites in 2015 the tax on guns and ammunition in their city would not prevent shootings or slayings, and we were right. We cautioned voters in 2018 that Initiative 1639 would not keep guns out of the wrong hands, and we were right, again. In fact, we have consistently been right about public safety issues while the other side is only interested in public disarmament.”
Gottlieb was an outspoken opponent of both gun control initiatives and the Seattle gun and ammunition tax. Since the tax was adopted in mid-2015, homicides in Seattle have more than tripled, from 20 in 2016 (according to Seattle Police Department data) to the new record high, and shots-fired complaints have steadily increased.
Likewise, since 2015, when the first of two anti-gun ballot measures was passed, homicides in the Evergreen State have climbed dramatically, according to data from the FBI Uniform Crime Report and the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC). In 2015, the state reported 209 murders. Last year, WASPC put the number of slayings at 394.
“The time has come for Washington State lawmakers and voters to roll back the extremist gun control measures, stop penalizing law-abiding gun owners and gun buyers for crimes they didn’t commit, and try a different tack,” Gottlieb said in a news release. “Almost three decades ago, we championed Hard Time for Armed Crime and Three Strikes laws. The public overwhelmingly supported both measures because instead of punishing the good guys, they concentrated on the bad guys. It’s time for that spirit to be revived.”
In November 2014, the billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobby bankrolled a $10.2 million campaign to pass I-594, which brought so-called “universal background checks” to the state. Gottlieb backed a competing initiative effort, but that campaign was literally out-spent by about 10-to-1.
As Gottlieb and other gun rights advocates have noted, I-594 did not prevent two high-profile shooting incidents two years later, in July and September of 2016. One involved a 19-year-old who legally purchased a semiautomatic rifle, passing a background check in the process. He killed three other teens and wounded a fourth at a party in suburban Mukilteo. The other involved a 20-year-old who took his stepfather’s rifle and fatally shot five people at a shopping mall in the community of Burlington.
It was the Mukilteo shooting which led to the 2018 campaign to pass I-1639, a restrictive law banning the sale of so-called “semiautomatic assault rifles”—a firearm which does not actually exist, except in the definition included in the initiative—to anyone under age 21. It also mandated a training requirement and waiting period, and was also bankrolled by the Seattle-based gun ban lobby, with vocal support from Democrat politicians.
But with rising violent crime, Gottlieb is calling out gun control proponents.
“How many more people must die before the gun ban bunch publicly acknowledges they’ve been wrong all along,” he wondered. “What will it take to compel Gov. Jay Inslee, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and their wealthy elitist anti-gun cronies to admit their agenda has failed miserably?”
Gottlieb threw down a challenge to participate in creating policies focusing on jailing violent criminals rather than penalizing law-abiding gun owners.
“Criminals can’t commit violent crimes when they are in jail,” he observed. “Thugs can’t kill or injure people from behind prison bars. If we want safe neighborhoods, we need solutions that work, not headlines that only offer false hopes. We will happily help with any good faith effort that doesn’t impair the rights of law-abiding citizens. This is our community, too, but we know the difference between good guys and bad guys. Anti-gunners obviously don’t.”
