By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
UPDATE: It has been almost ten years since Washington voters approved the first radically restrictive gun control initiative—the first of two—followed by passage of a string of gun laws, yet a newly-reported study by a California law group says the Evergreen State is the 8th most dangerous in the country.
The Spokane Spokesman Review reported that while crime rates nationally have been decreasing, “crime rates in the state of Washington have only increased, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation crime data report.”
None of this is lost on the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the national grassroots gun rights organization coincidentally headquartered in Bellevue, Wash. In a statement, CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb pulled no punches.
“The data is straightforward and tells us everything we need to know,” Gottlieb stated. “Washington’s restrictive gun control experiment has been an abject failure.”
The report revealed what the Simmrin Law Group says are the top five safest states, and the five most dangerous states.
Top five safest states:
1. New Jersey
2. Vermont*
3. Maine*
4. Idaho*
5. West Virginia*
The most dangerous states:
1. New Mexico
2. Colorado
3. Pennsylvania
4. Nevada
5. Tennessee*
What the study did not reveal, but what TGM found with a quick glance is that four of the five safest states, according to the Simmrin list, are “constitutional carry” states, as listed by the U.S. Concealed Carry Association. Only one of the most dangerous states—Tennessee—is identified as a permitless carry state. Constitutional carry states are marked with an asterisk (*).
Washington is also not on the list of constitutional carry states, but some 690,000 citizens have concealed pistol licenses.
According to the Tacoma News Tribune, the Simmrin Law Group studied data from the FBI and National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). On their website, Simmrin explained, “We analyzed crime data from the FBI and National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), evaluating ten specific crime categories. By assigning weights to each type of crime, we then applied a safety score out of 100, revealing America’s 10 safest and most dangerous states.”
The Simmrin study says Washington “has a high kidnapping and abduction rate with a 16.3 incidents per 100,000 residents, according to the study. In 2022, there were 1,327 kidnapping/abduction incidents and 1,454 offenses reported in Washington, according to the FBI crime report.” The state also has “the highest larceny and theft rate compared to other states.” Larceny and theft are not normally violent crimes, but their high rates in Washington suggest, at the very least, a lack of enforcement of existing laws.
As TGM has reported in the past, the number of murders has steadily climbed in the state over the past nine years, in the wake of the passage of Initiative 594 in November 2014. I-594 was a “universal background check” measure, followed four years later by Initiative 1639 in 2018. I-1639 adopted strict regulations on so-called “semiautomatic assault rifles.”
Data from both the FBI Uniform Crime Report and the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs shows Washington reported 172 homicides in 2014. In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, the state logged 394 homicides, more than twice the number.
CCRKBA’s Gottlieb has frequently criticized Washington’s gun control crusade as an “abject failure.” In Seattle, where the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group, is headquartered, the number of murders has tripled since the city adopted a special gun and ammunition tax in the summer of 2015. The tax took effect in 2016. That year, according to Seattle Police crime data, the city logged 20 slayings. Last year, there were at least 69 killings, and according to the independent site Seattle Homicide, there were 73.
“Evidently,” Gottlieb observed, “the gun prohibition lobby is living in an alternate universe. Giving the state such high ratings probably won’t make the families of violent crime victims feel any better. We’re still waiting for anti-gunners to explain how, after almost ten years of pushing increasingly restrictive gun laws, which only penalize law-abiding citizens, the number of Evergreen State murders has more than doubled. Clamping down on gun rights was supposed to reduce murder and mayhem.
“For that matter,” he continued, “perhaps Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who has championed these restrictive gun laws, might also offer an explanation as to why the number of murders statewide has gone up more than 100 percent since 2014. He’s the top law enforcement official in the state, and he’s running for governor, so he needs to explain to the voters how this has happened on his watch. Maybe he won’t be satisfied until Washington leads the list of dangerous states, so he can brag about being Number One for violent crime.”
