Washington state used to be fairly pro-gun, then all the Silicon Valley types moved in, started voting for the same kind of policies that made staying in California untenable, and will learn nothing when they run somewhere else. One of the policies these kinds of folks supported was gun control. They were convinced they had to have it, and nothing would do until they got it, so a ballot initiative started the ball rolling.
Since then, they’ve continued to pass anti-gun laws.
Luckily for them, the efficacy of those gun laws appears strong because homicide rates nationwide are dropping and…wait, this just in from Ammoland’s David Workman. Gun control sucks.
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2015, Washington state recorded 209 total homicides, of which 141 involved firearms. In 2016, the number of homicides dipped to 195, again according to FBI data, but in 2017, the number of Evergreen State homicides jumped to 228 and in 2018, it spiked to 232.
In 2018, Washington voters approved Initiative 1639, an even tougher gun control law regulating so-called “assault weapons” and adding restrictions on purchasers. Also, the Democrat-controlled legislature has adopted a string of strict gun policies which, if one believes social media, have caused many gun owners in the state to relocate to Idaho, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Tennessee, Arizona or some other rights-friendly jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, the number of homicides in Washington dropped again in 2019 to 194, but in 2020, the number shot right back up again, dramatically.
Here’s how EveryStat reported things: “The rate of gun deaths has increased 12% from 2015 to 2024 in Washington, compared to a 15% increase nationwide. This means that in 2024 there were 197 more gun deaths than in 2015.”
EveryStat also noted, “In Washington, the rate of gun suicide increased 4% and gun homicide increased 33% from 2015 to 2024, compared to a 16% increase and 14% increase nationwide, respectively.”
And, yet, Everytown contends, “After passing a slate of new gun safety laws in the past decade, Washington is among the top 10 states in terms of gun law strength.”
There were other observations. “In an average year, 950 people die by guns.” Notice how the firearm is blamed, instead of the person pressing the trigger.
Now, consider that the so-called gun homicide rate for the entire United States went from 4.6 in 2017 (according to the CDC) to 4.7 (based on preliminary figures from the FBI) in 2024. That’s only about a two percent increase across the entire nation, and at least a fair chunk of that difference came from Washington state.
And the nationwide rate was still a drop from the pandemic levels we all witnessed.
Meanwhile, Everytown is still touting Washington as some kind of model. It’s a top-10 state for gun law strength now, and they’re just kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that gun control doesn’t work. It doesn’t make things better, and Washington state basically volunteered itself to be a test case proving that.
While the Bruen decision was widely regarded by anti-gun types as dangerous and would lead to widespread violence as armed citizens would flip their lids at the slightest insult and shoot everyone in the vicinity, what has actually happened is a drop in violent crime to historic lows. I’m intellectually honest enough to say that correlation doesn’t equal causation, even when it’s really convenient for my arguments.
But what I can definitively say is that causation should lead to correlation, and both with the nation post-Bruen and Washington state post its gun control push, we’re not seeing the causation of more guns leading to more crime and gun control leading to less. We see the exact opposite.
Shocking, I know.
Everytown, as well as every other gun control group out there, will continue to push the same tired old lie, refusing to see the results of its own data, especially when it’s inconvenient to their entire cause.
How many people have to die before they admit that gun control is a failed experiment?
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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