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Washington gun control: Dems and Inslee play games

Jan 15, 2018, 11:48 AM | Updated: 4:25 pm

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(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

The theatrical fever for Washington gun control runs high among Jay Inslee and his Democratic backup dancers. But their stage show is all flash and no substance.

Nothing Jay Inslee’s theater troop is performing this year will curtail deaths involving the use of firearms. Here are some of the dance numbers coming from Democrats in Olympia this year.

The whirling dervish dance called “law-abiding gun owners are the problem”

Less than .0001 percent of guns in America are used in crime, a far smaller number used by legal gun owners. There are between 270 million and 310 million guns in the hands of Americans. There are roughly 30,000 deaths each year involving guns; 61 percent of those deaths are suicides, a portion of the rest are justified homicide, including those committed by police officers. The remainder are largely committed using pistols, mostly in a handful of American cities where gang violence claims the lives of young people; gang violence committed by criminals with handguns not rifles.

The theater troop for Washington gun control won’t touch that last statistic, even though focusing on known, criminal predators is far more possible than dancing around unpredictable, mass shootings that are not increasing in frequency. Politicians and actors like Jay Inslee perform theater based upon mass shootings because it is easy to scare people with the thought that they, or their loved ones, may be killed in such an event.

Inner city violence, on the other hand, is easy for Jay Inslee and his circus performers to ignore because most people have the luxury of knowing they don’t live in areas prone to that. That is a comfort the Seattle City Council’s welcome program for criminals is eroding as violence committed with guns increased. Seattle’s easily predictable increase in murders with guns was not because of legal gun owners, it was due to gang violence as gangs prepare for the gold rush of Seattle’s defacto legalization of heroin.

The rifles-that-look-scary-to-people-who-know-absolutely-nothing-about-firearms boogie for gun control

Senate Bill 5444 and its cohort in the House, HB 1387, would require a state license to own, sell, buy, or manufacture so called “assault weapons.” Let’s be clear, assault weapons are hunting rifles with super-scary, black plastic parts. They are what the government has decided to call “large capacity” magazines. SB 6049 / House 2422 would ban what government has deemed “high-capacity magazines” of 10 rounds or more.

Washington gun control often takes this form: focusing with obsessive fervor on firearms that are used in the smallest minority of shooting deaths. Even the New York Times admits it is handguns not rifles involved in most shootings. The second part of this dance is where politicians pretend swapping clips — what the law calls magazines — during a shooting session is hard. Here, Washington state gun control dancers, is a video showing how “hard” it is.

SB 5992 would ban any trigger-modification devices that increase a weapon’s rate of fire — devices such as bump stocks. This dance is so compelling the NRA favors banning bumps stocks and devices like them. I am a hardcore gun owner and I don’t particularly care if they are banned because it doesn’t remove any of my rights.

Facts don’t mean much to advocates of gun control in Washington state, but here are a few inconvenient truths. Fact number one: bump stocks were extremely rare — I have been shooting since I was 7 years old and had never heard of them until the media advertised for them following the Las Vegas murders. Fact number two: firearms can be converted to fully automatic without a bump stock and in the privacy of your home. If, God forbid, the day comes where I need fully-automatic fire capacity arises, I can convert on my own.

You can see proof here (mild language warning).

The Socialist dirty dance for Washington gun control

Senate Bill 6146 and its House companion, HB 2666, would allow local governments — cities and counties — to determine their own gun regulation laws. With this passed, Seattle will sprint toward a massive and expensive over-reach for gun control in Washington state by attempting to ban all guns.

This will accomplish several things. The Seattle City Council will enjoy virtue signaling again; they will please their base of genital-hat wearing, business-hating, permanent adolescents. They will spend massive amounts of taxpayer money and they will create record spikes in gun purchases and massive donations to pro self-defense groups. Lastly, City Attorney Pete Holmes, who loves heroin use in Seattle, may get a free trip to Washington D.C. to lose in front of the Supreme Court.

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Washington gun control: Dems and Inslee play games