Dori Monson: I have a solution to gun violence in Seattle

Taken from The Dori Monson Show.

It was just a horribly unnerving day on Thursday when we found out about the shooting at Seattle Pacific University.

On Friday, we carried a press conference that involved an awful lot of grandstanding politicians. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said this in that press conference:

“We were surrounded by young happy children who will grow up to be young adults. We have to build a different future for them in this city, than the future that we’ve experience year after year and decade after decade.”

I want to focus on that for just a moment. Ed Murray was laying the groundwork for a lot of new gun legislation. He’s going to use this as the linchpin for introducing more gun laws in Seattle.

But there is no evidence that gun laws would have stopped this shooter. He had the gun for seven or eight years. He used it to go hunting years and years ago. He didn’t obtain this gun so he could go do the shooting, and there is no conceivable law that would prevent somebody who bought a hunting rifle eight years ago, and then snaps mentally, from doing this.

So what do we do? Mayor Ed Murray said we have to build a different future for this city than what we’ve done year after year, decade after decade.

Well, Seattle has been under Democratic control for 58 years. This has been a one-party city, with total Democratic or Socialist control of the city council and the mayor’s office for pretty much my entire lifetime. I’ve lived here my whole life. I’ve never seen anything but a Democratic mayor in Seattle. So, Ed Murray, are you saying your party has failed on this one?

I did a little bit of research on this, and the cities that pass tougher gun laws, which is what Ed Murray wants to do – well they can still end up at the top of the list for gun violence.

Chicago and Washington D.C. have the toughest gun laws in America, and they’re both in the top 10 for gun violence. So gun laws don’t seem to help, no matter what the grandstanding politicians want to pretend.

In fact, I have the full list of the top 10 cities for gun violence. They are: Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, Oakland, Memphis, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Chicago and Milwaukee. Some of them have tougher gun laws than others, but that doesn’t seem to help at all.

So what is the common thread between all of those cities?

I went to see where they all were politically. Detroit has had all Democratic mayors since 1962, Baltimore since 1967, New Orleans since 1872, Oakland since 1888, Memphis since 1895, Cleveland since 1990, Philadelphia since 1952, Kansas City since 1991, Chicago since 1931, and Milwaukee has had either Democratic or Socialist mayors continuously since 1908.

Now correlation is not causation. I know enough about statistics to not say that is the reason for the gun violence. But certainly, that is a more common thread than what Ed Murray is going to be proposing, which is tougher gun laws. Because the cities with the toughest gun laws in the country, it doesn’t help. They’re still in the top 10 for gun violence. But the common thread for all those cities is who controls the cities.

The common thread with all the cities that are plagued with gun violence is the political reality here in Seattle. That is, for at least 30, in some cases 100 to 120 years, there’s been one party in control of the cities that experience the most gun violence.

So when Ed Murray says:

“We have to build a different future for them in this city, than the future that we’ve experience year after year and decade after decade.”

Ed Murray, I’m asking you, are you putting the blame on Mike McGinn, Greg Nickels, Paul Schell, Norm Rice? Are you putting the blame on your party because of what they’ve created in this city? If you’re railing against what is in this city, and you say we have to do it differently, you must be blaming your party.

But no, you’re going to continue to just pretend that that is not an issue. You’re going to be passing more gun laws.

Just think, maybe we can be like Washington D.C. and Chicago once they get those tougher laws passed, wouldn’t that be something?

Taken from Monday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.

JS