By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
A recent report from U.S. News identifying what it called the Best States Rankings, Washington came in 8th overall, but one category ranking could play a role in this year’s gubernatorial race: Crime & Corrections, with the Evergreen State coming in at number 39 in the “top 40.”
According to Seattle’s KOMO News, the survey used “thousands of data points to measure how well states are performing for their citizens.”
How might this report figure in the race for the governor’s office in November? The top two contenders are current Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, and former Congressman and King County Sheriff Dave Reichert, a Republican. Ferguson is the top law enforcement officer in the state, whose policies are criticized by conservatives as being soft on crime. Reichert is the retired lawman on whose watch the “Green River Killer” was arrested and convicted.
According to the U.S. News report, the Top Three states overall are Utah, New Hampshire and Nebraska. All three have Republican governors and conservative legislatures.
The rankings consider such things as each state’s economy, infrastructure (roads, bridges, internet service, etc.), natural environment, health care, education, fiscal stability of state government and public safety. It is in the latter category where Washington has not fared well, according to critics in the Second Amendment community.
Evergreen State gun owners point to the dramatic increase in homicides over the past ten years, a period which has seen passage of two restrictive gun control initiatives and adoption of laws further clamping down on law-abiding gun owners including a 2022 ban on so-called “large-capacity magazines” and the 2023 ban on so-called “assault weapons.”
As TGM has reported, using data from the annual FBI Uniform Crime Report, Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs and Seattle Police Department, in 2014, Washington reported 172 homicides, including 94 involving firearms. By 2022, the number had climbed to 394 murders, more than double the body count. In Seattle, the state’s largest city and the headquarters of the gun control lobbying group, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, there were 23 murders reported in 2014, and last year (2023), the body count was either 69 or 73, depending upon data from the SPD or a private group known as Seattle Homicide. Either way, the number of Seattle slayings had tripled by the end of 2023.
With Washington at No. 39 in the Crime & Corrections rankings, this translates to being 11th from the bottom.
The ten states with the lowest overall rankings are South Carolina, Michigan, Oklahoma, Alabama, Alaska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, New Mexico and Louisiana, in that order. Not all of these states were at the bottom in the Crime & Corrections category, either. For example, West Virginia was No. 21, Mississippi came in at No. 25, Alabama was No. 28, Oklahoma was No. 36 and Michigan was No. 38.
