By 2022, the police department’s Crime Dashboard shows the number of homicides had doubled, to 52 for the year. In the summer of 2015, Seattle adopted and gun and ammunition special tax for the purpose of raising revenue to fight and prevent so-called “gun violence.” According to Seattle Police data, that year the city suffered 26 homicides. Maybe the state would be better without the restrictive laws. If that’s “tremendous progress,” say many gun rights activists, the state would be in real trouble without all of these new gun restrictions…or perhaps not. According to FBI data, by that year-in the aftermath of I-594 passed four years earlier-Washington reported 232 slayings, including 138 involving guns, although only a fraction were identified as rifles.īy 2021, the most recent year for which FBI data is available (the 2022 data will be released in late September), Washington experienced 325 murders, of which 209 involved firearms. In 2018, the Alliance’s deep pocket supporters financed another measure, Initiative 1639, which prohibited young adults from purchasing so-called “semiautomatic assault rifles,” mandated training for older people before they could buy such guns, and invented a definition of the non-existent weapon that applies to every semi-auto rifle ever manufactured anywhere on earth. In 2014, the Alliance bankrolled Initiative 549, mandating so-called “universal background checks.” That year, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, Washington reported 172 homicides including 94 involving firearms. According to an account of that gala event on the Alliance’s website, the group’s CEO, Renée Hopkins, told the audience, “Today we celebrate the tremendous progress we’ve made in the fight against gun violence since the Alliance was founded in 2013. Together, we have passed three ballot measures and more than 30 community safety bills through Olympia, elected a true gun responsibility majority to the legislature, removed hundreds of guns from dangerous situations, and saved countless lives.” History and crime data tell a different story. In 2022, Harrell was the keynoter at the annual fundraising and back-slapping luncheon held by the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, the billionaire-backed gun control lobbying group based in Seattle. More than 40 states now have preemption laws, which seem to infuriate the gun prohibition lobby. Preemption establishes uniformity in state gun laws from border to border, and Washington’s act has served as a model for many, if not most, similar statutes across the country. It prevents him and other municipal mayors and city governments from adopting their own, often conflicting, gun control ordinances. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, a perennial gun control advocate, has been campaigning for years to undo Washington State’s model firearms preemption law passed in 1983 and reinforced in 1985. The suspect was reportedly convicted in September 2017 of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon in Cook County, Illinois Superior Court. A gun recovered near the crime scene, identified in a Seattle Police report as a 9mm Smith & Wesson M&P Shield, was reportedly stolen in Lakewood, a suburb of Tacoma in neighboring Pierce County. The suspect is a 30-year-old former Illinois resident and convicted felon. The key ingredient in this story seems to get buried. ® SEAHAWKS, SEAHAWKS LOGO, SPIRIT OF 12, WE ARE 12, BRING ON THE 12, LEGION OF BOOM, 12 and 12S are trademarks of the Seattle Seahawks.Local news competitor KIRO News, the CBS affiliate, quoted Michael Hoyle, identified as a friend of the murdered woman: “You can’t prevent this, not unless there’s policy change.
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