By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Following last month’s fatal shooting incident at the Seattle Center during that city’s annual “Bite of Seattle” food festival, Evergreen State Democrats have apparently found themselves in a bit of a dilemma as they try to chart a course for more gun control actions in 2027, according to a Wednesday article in the Seattle Times.
The 1,788-word report refers to one Democrat lawmaker who “described his frustration that the party won’t make it easier to lock up juveniles with multiple convictions for illegal possession of a gun.”
The Seattle Center shooting involved teenage gunmen, including one who was shot dead during the melee which left two other people fatally wounded in what Seattle police have indicated was a gang-related incident.
In the aftermath of the deadly shooting, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms—coincidentally headquartered in nearby Bellevue—issued a statement to local media, including the Times, which declared “Seattle Doesn’t Have a Gun Problem, It Has a Crime Problem.”
“If you look at the Seattle Police Blotter,” noted CCRKBA Executive Director Andrew Gottlieb at the time, “you will find reports of shootings and violent crime, including stabbings. Deflecting blame to guns is a non-starter because they just don’t commit crimes by themselves. We don’t blame cars for fatal crashes, and we shouldn’t infer guns are to blame for violent crime.”
But deflecting blame to guns, and penalizing la-abiding Washington state gun owners, appears to be exactly what Democrat lawmakers have been doing, and will continue doing, as explained in the Times article.
The Times quotes anti-gun State Rep. Liz Berry (D-Seattle), whose name has appeared frequently as a sponsor or co-sponsor of gun control legislation over the past few years, explaining she and other lawmakers will work to restore funding for community violence-prevention grants, which fell victim to budget slashing in recent years. She also wants to pursue a so-called “safe storage” mandate and a measure outlawing so-called “ghost guns.”
But Rep. Jim Walsh (R-Aberdeen), who also chairs the State Republican Party, reportedly fired back, noting how the Seattle Center shooting proved once again that legislating against the rights of law-abiding gun owners does not prevent criminals, including juveniles, from ignoring gun laws.
The surviving Seattle Center gunman is only 15, far too young to legally be carrying a handgun anywhere in the state, yet he was armed with an alleged “ghost gun” that was apparently fitted with an illegal large capacity magazine.
The Times report also quotes Renée Hopkins, CEO of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a Seattle-based—and billionaire-backed—gun prohibition lobbying group, lamenting, “We have a captive Supreme Court, we have a White House and federal agencies that have been infiltrated by the gun lobby, we have a Congress that continues to both actively push policies that enrich the gun lobby and to undo laws that help keep our communities safe.”
Gun control organizations have been on the losing side in recent years as the U.S. Supreme Court has handed down several rulings which have put teeth back into the Second Amendment, which protects—rather than “grants”—the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms. CCRKBA has been working at the grassroots level for decades to stop the erosion of Second Amendment rights, along with efforts to essentially emasculate Article I, Section 24 of the Washington State Constitution, which also affirms the right of individual citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves or the state.
In the Times report, much attention is paid to existing juvenile law which gives youthful gun criminals what amounts to four passes on gun crimes before they can ever face punishment. Current law requires five convictions for illegal gun possession before action is taken. One Democrat, Rep. David Hackney, wants to change that via House Bill 1536, which has yet to have a public hearing. His idea is to reduce the number of required convictions to three, or maybe even two.
Democrats also may be looking at expanding so-called “sensitive areas” where guns may not be legally carried, but the Bite of Seattle prohibited firearms at the event, and that didn’t stop the perpetrators from opening fire. The only people who were prevented from bringing guns to the event were law-abiding citizens.
Reader responses to the Times article include the predictable suggestions make it virtually impossible for legally-armed citizens to actually bear arms, which would likely be found unconstitutional. Others complain about the country being “awash with guns.”
And one reader observed, “All those laws that are passed don’t effect (sic) those carrying out crimes with firearms. Who these laws effect (sic) is the law abiding gun owners who are made to look like criminals just for having firearms. Democrats in Olympia need to be smart enough to know the difference…”
