Since pushing through a gun control initiative in 2014, the Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group, has insisted its agenda would help reduce so-called “gun violence” and bring down the body count.
According to the Seattle Times, that is now a demonstrable falsehood, and the data proves it. Times columnist Danny Westneat wrote Wednesday about a homicide earlier in the week that brought the city’s homicide total for this year equal to that of all last year. Twenty-eight people have been murdered and, as Westneat observed, “We’re only in August.”
In 2015, the year after Initiative 594 was passed with a $10.2 million campaign, Seattle racked up 24 slayings, according to Seattle Police Department data. That same year, the Seattle City Council hastily adopted a special tax on gun and ammunition sales designed to raise funds to fight “gun violence.” In 2016, Seattle reported 18 slayings and statewide there were 195 murders including 127 involving firearms, according to the annual FBI Uniform Crime Report for that year.
In 2017, Seattle logged 27 murders and the statewide total jumped to 228, including 134 involving guns, according to SPD and FBI data. In 2018—the most recent year for which FBI data is available and the year the Alliance rammed through another multi-million-dollar gun control initiative—Washington saw 232 murders, including 138 involving firearms. Meanwhile, Seattle reported 31 slayings for the year.
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For a city of its size, Seattle suffers a remarkably low number of homicides. Compared to similarly-populated Milwaukee, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., Seattle is almost comatose. That’s why the upward trajectory of homicides, especially after Seattle voters overwhelmingly backed the gun control measures, is alarming.
If gun control worked, the numbers should be spiraling downward.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups predicted the gun control laws wouldn’t prevent criminals from getting guns. The facts are on their side.
I-594 was a so-called “universal background check” measure. It was sold to voters as a way of keeping guns out of the wrong hands.
Two years ago, Initiative 1639 was sold as a way of preventing mass shooting tragedies, and the proponents used two crimes committed in 2016—which should have been prevented by I-594, incidentally—to justify passage.
Seattle’s “gun violence tax” obviously has failed to live up to its promises.
Washington is a “blue” state and Seattle is a “deep blue” city where far left liberals dominate. They reflexively support gun control; despite the knowledge those laws really don’t work. But they cannot live in denial forever.
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