Why you should be worried about the passage of I-594

Now that, as polls predicted, Initiative 594 passed, you should actually be concerned. But not for the reason you may expect.

I-594 codifies universal background checks for all purchases and most transfers.

You’ve heard a lot of folks talk about how vague I-594 is written – and it is. The people who say otherwise are being dishonest with you. They’re ignoring the vagaries of the law because they like the spirit of it. I like the spirit of it. Folks overwhelmingly support the idea of background checks. But when we’re dealing with our constitutional rights, we shouldn’t deal with vagaries.

Yet, this isn’t why gun owners should be concerned.

I was reading a press release from the Jewish Federation of Seattle and they wrote, “If present trends hold in the ballot count, Washington State will be taking a sensible step to curb gun violence. After years of gridlock and inaction, the voters have taken it upon themselves to lead in making our community safer and more secure.”

Then last night on this show, Ralph Fascitelli, president of Washington Ceasefire, said, “I think we need to find a balance between personal freedoms and public safety.”

Do you see the trend? It’s about safety.

The thing is, I-594 has nothing to do with safety, not really. It won’t lead to less gun violence in this state because the gun violence is overwhelmingly being committed by criminals and suicide.

First of all, let’s give you the context because folks like Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, King County Executive Dow Constantine and others, who are uncomfortable with guns, like to say we have a gun violence epidemic in this city.

We do not. We’ve seen a steady decline since, at least, 2005 in Washington state. On average, there have been under 100 gun homicides a year (based on data from the FBI).

Criminals, as it turns out, don’t follow the law – and there’s no reason to believe they’ll follow this one. Remember, there’s no enforcement mechanism.

So, if some shady gun dealer wants to sell a gun to a criminal, well he’ll still do it and he’ll have broken the law before I-594 already and that criminal will then commit the crime he or she was going to commit.

Now, I-594 does zero to address the mental health problem in this state – and yes, we do have a problem – much more so than the gun homicide “issue.” Gun suicides have gone up steadily since 2005. Last year, there were 1,008 suicides!

I-594 does zero to address that.

Why is this important? Because in a year or two when the gun control proponents have new data to suggest nothing meaningful has changed in public safety since I-594 passed, they’ll start a new initiative with the main goal of limiting your constitutionally protected access to guns.

These folks are driven by ideology and a fear of guns. So much so, that they put in place initiatives like this one, that they know do nothing but burden law abiding citizens from purchasing and transferring guns. Then they use the lack of results on gun homicides or suicide to push further and further into taking away your gun rights.

This is a strategy. This is their strategy. Be careful.