On Sunday, a shooting at a Seattle food festival left three people dead and another five injured. It was an undoubtedly traumatizing event for everyone in the vicinity, but it wasn’t the kind of mass shooting we typically see make headlines. This wasn’t the result of some disaffected jackwagon who wanted to make a name for themselves, or who hated the world and wanted everyone to die.
This was a shootout between two parties. Two people with no respect for human life decided to shoot up an event meant to be about enjoying good food, all because they apparently didn’t like each other.
And the city officials’ rhetoric has irked the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
In a press release:
In the aftermath of Sunday’s deadly shooting at the Seattle Center—when police would initially only describe one suspect as a “young person” and a press briefing was delayed for hours, ostensibly due to safety concerns—the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said the city has a crime problem, not a gun problem.
“It took 17 hours for police to acknowledge the suspect they had in custody is only 15 years old,” said CCRKBA Executive Director Andrew Gottlieb. “And then Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes talked about ‘small groups’ and not much about gangs. I’m sorry, but that sounds like political correctness rather than candor. He also said there was a second shooter, whom they are trying to identify. He is not in custody.
“Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson must have used the term ‘gun violence’ more than a half-dozen times during her remarks,” Gottlieb observed. “Chief Barnes used it at least ten times. All that does is demonize guns when the real culprit here is apparently a teenager who legally could not be carrying a handgun.
“If you look at the Seattle Police Blotter,” he continued, “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.
“The public has a right to know the source of the two guns recovered at the scene,” Gottlieb noted. “It is clear the teenage suspect didn’t legally buy the gun he allegedly used. The other gun recovered by police, allegedly used by another shooter, may have also been obtained illicitly. So far, that apparently hasn’t been determined.
“Mayor Wilson and Chief Barnes repeatedly mentioned efforts to reduce ‘gun violence’,” he said. “That typically translates to more gun control measures against law-abiding adults including the 112,500 King County residents who have valid concealed pistol licenses. They haven’t hurt anybody. Yet, instead of acknowledging that the problem is with criminals, including juveniles whose parents should be asked why their kid is at the Seattle Center shooting people, we hear about something called ‘gun violence reduction.’ But you’re not going to reduce gun-related violence by penalizing the wrong people, and Seattle’s leaders must keep that in mind.”
The whole “small groups” language is, in fact, troubling. Gangs can be termed as “small groups” in a lot of contexts, but it’s language that many think of as racially charged or something, even if it’s accurate. Well, I’m sorry, but if it’s gang-related, the people of Seattle deserve to know that and to know what the city is going to do about the gangs.
Mayor Wilson’s discussion of “gun violence” is clearly, as Gottlieb notes, a case of demonizing guns.
However, as I noted on Monday in my own writing about this incident, Washington state is one of Everytown’s top 10 states for gun laws, yet it hasn’t seen the promised dividends of those laws. What happened in Seattle is really just a prime example of how officials are so tied to the idea of gun control, either because they believe it or they see it as a source of power, that they cannot comprehend that maybe the issue isn’t guns.
A teenager couldn’t buy a gun lawfully, and that’s who one of the alleged shooters is. In no universe is a teenager old enough to buy a gun within the eyes of the law, yet this kid allegedly had one.
Just like Gottlieb, I suspect the other firearm recovered at the scene will turn out to have been obtained illegally as well. Why? Because the kind of people who tend to start shooting up food festivals, then run, aren’t your law-abiding armed citizen. That’s not the action of someone who believes they were defending themselves, generally speaking.
But it fits with a gang-banger who just shot up a public event because of a grudge, either offensively or defensively, and knows he can’t legally have a firearm.
Seattle’s leaders need to correct their rhetoric to better reflect reality or else there can and will be more events like this down the road. Self-delusion doesn’t benefit anyone, and pretending it’s the guns or that “small groups” aren’t gangs is the epitome of self-delusion.
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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