As 2023 Wraps, WaPo Targets Guns Again, Ignoring Lessons from WA, CO

Buried about 20 paragraphs into a large 5,000-plus report clearly aimed toward stirring public emotion towards a ban on so-called “assault weapons,” the Washington Publish tells a few handful of U.S. Senators—all Democrats—who now remorse and want they might change their votes on gun management laws following the Sandy Hook tragedy.

The story is detailed and well-written, and it deserves to be learn by Second Modification activists, maybe for no different purpose than to know how “the opposite facet” thinks and causes.

The essential passage says this: “The senators’ altering views additionally mirror how the Democratic Get together has moved in recent times towards supporting extra aggressive gun management.”

There may very well be no clearer sign about what American gun homeowners—and particularly the tens of millions of peaceful residents who personal trendy semiautomatic rifles and pistols—will face within the New 12 months, by the hands of Democrats, whose get together has come to be often called the “Get together of Gun Prohibition.”

The WaPo article provides, “Many Democrats had lengthy refused to contemplate strict gun limits, blaming their get together’s steep losses within the 1994 midterm elections on the enactment that 12 months of an assault weapons ban. The ban’s expiration in 2004 preceded a brand new period of hovering semiautomatic weapons manufacturing, escalating after Sandy Hook, that has made the AR-15 the nation’s best-selling rifle. Right this moment, a well-financed advocacy community — sparked by the 2013 defeat within the Senate and supercharged by the mobilization of younger folks after the 2018 faculty capturing in Parkland, Fla. — has heightened stress on Democrats to unify round stronger gun-control insurance policies.”

This 12 months’s passing of profession gun ban advocate Sen. Dianne Feinstein won’t seemingly sluggish them down. Neither will considerations concerning the November 2024 elections.

The story particulars efforts by Sandy Hook dad and mom to push gun management insurance policies.

One of many takeaways from the story is just not what was stated, however what was lacking: Any examination of why restrictive gun controls fail. Merely put, criminals don’t obey gun management legal guidelines.

Two current examples could be present in Colorado and Washington state, each which have earned excessive marks from the annual scorecard from the Giffords gun management lobbying group, for passing new restrictions through the previous 12 months.

Printed crime information from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for the years 2020, 2021 and 2022 present homicides within the state have gone up, from 312 in 2020 to final 12 months’s 386.

Denver Publish archives additionally inform an attention-grabbing story. Within the Feb. 9, 2018, the newspaper lamented 56 slayings within the metropolis in each 2017 and 2016. By March 14, 2022, the Denver Publish was reporting this about 2021: “Ninety-six folks died in Denver homicides final 12 months, the best quantity recorded since 1981 and a toll that’s left dozens extra households devastated by the elevated degree of violence that’s ripped by way of the town over the previous two years.”

Colorado imposed a “excessive capability journal” ban, driving one enterprise out of the state. The Legislature repealed state preemption permitting native management of gun legal guidelines.

Out in Washington, Giffords gave the state an “A-“ grade for passing restrictive gun legal guidelines—which, by the way, solely appear to have impaired the rights of trustworthy residents—whereas the murder quantity has gone steadily up. As reported by TheGunMag.com (previously GUN WEEK), passage of restrictive gun controls over the previous few years, together with bans on “giant capability magazines” and the long run sale of recent semi-auto rifles, Seattle has set a brand new murder document this 12 months.

Information from the FBI Uniform Crime Report and the Washington Affiliation of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs annual crime report reveals the variety of reported homicides go from 194 in 2019 (FBI) to an alarming 394 in 2022 (WASPC).

As reported in TheGunMag.com, Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Washington-based Residents Committee for the Proper to Preserve and Bear Arms, has referred to as out anti-gunners, who’ve been silent.

“Seattle, and the entire of Washington State, is proof optimistic that passing legal guidelines which solely impression trustworthy gun homeowners accomplish nothing to cut back violent crime,” Gottlieb stated earlier this month. “We warned folks in 2014 that Initiative 594 wouldn’t stop homicide or mayhem, and we had been proper. We informed Seattleites in 2015 the tax on weapons and ammunition of their metropolis wouldn’t stop shootings or slayings, and we had been proper. We cautioned voters in 2018 that Initiative 1639 wouldn’t maintain weapons out of the mistaken arms, and we had been proper, once more. In actual fact, we have now persistently been proper about public issues of safety whereas the opposite facet is just thinking about public disarmament.

“What number of extra folks should die earlier than the gun ban bunch publicly acknowledges they’ve been mistaken all alongside,” he questioned. “What is going to it take to compel Gov. Jay Inslee, Lawyer Common Bob Ferguson, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and their rich elitist anti-gun cronies to confess their agenda has failed miserably?

“The time has come for Washington State lawmakers and voters to roll again the extremist gun management measures, cease penalizing law-abiding gun homeowners and gun consumers for crimes they didn’t commit, and check out a unique tack,” Gottlieb instructed. “Nearly three a long time in the past, we championed Exhausting Time for Armed Crime and Three Strikes legal guidelines. The general public overwhelmingly supported each measures as a result of as an alternative of punishing the great guys, they focused on the unhealthy guys. It’s time for that spirit to be revived.”

In the meantime, the WaPo report was accompanied by a 742-word editorial calling upon members of Congress to behave.

“It ought to be inconceivable to learn The Publish’s sequence on the AR-15-style rifles with out realizing one thing is deeply mistaken within the nation — together with, in fact, its permissive gun legal guidelines,” the newspaper stated. “The final installment within the sequence, revealed this week, reveals that among the politicians whose job it’s to make these legal guidelines are starting to rethink issues. Extra of their colleagues ought to observe go well with.”

There isn’t any small irony within the WaPo’s unwavering help for extra gun management, basically advocating for restrictions on the Second Modification, whereas one other Gottlieb group—the Second Modification Basis—has been feverishly defending the First Modification rights of free speech and the press in a case difficult a restrictive California legislation relating to firearms promoting in a publication titled “Junior Sports activities Journal.”

Equally informative are among the reader responses to the WaPo editorial. Most reveal a revulsion of the correct to maintain and bear arms, to the purpose of some calling for repeal of the Second Modification. However just a few others argue that an “assault weapon” ban won’t survive a courtroom problem, “nor measurably reduce gun deaths.”

With the brand new 12 months simply days away, gun homeowners who take into account themselves activists ought to learn and examine the WaPo story and editorial, as a result of the ideas and feelings expressed in these phrases mirror a mindset which is coming after your rights.

About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, creator of a number of books on the Proper to Preserve & Bear Arms, and previously an NRA-certified firearms teacher.