King County Washington puts out a quarterly “Shots Fired” report. The report chronicles firearm violence and tracks the statistical data concerning illegal firearm use. Recently the 2021 annual report was released and the findings are quite grim. In a nutshell, King County is showing a rise in illegal firearm use by quite a bit during last year. The disconcerting thing about seeing this rise is that the citizens of Washington State were sold on a promise that illicit gun use would go down after the enactment of several recent so-called “gun control” measures.

A release by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms points out these facts, highlighting the failures in the policies.

Monday’s “Shots Fired” report from the King County (WA) Prosecutor’s Office on the number of gun-related homicides and injuries last year is more proof that gun control laws and anti-rights initiatives adopted over the past few years in Washington State have been abject failures, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today in reaction.

“Proponents of these laws, and especially the gun control initiatives passed in recent years, sold the public a bill of goods, and now everybody knows it,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Voters were told in 2014 that Initiative 594 would reduce gun-related violence, and today’s data proves they were misled. Four years later, the Seattle-based gun prohibition lobby promised Initiative 1639 would prevent gun-related homicides, and they lied again. In Olympia, anti-gun politicians are pushing more gun restrictions right now, with the same promises.

“The billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobby and their allies in Olympia claim that so-called ‘gun violence’ is an epidemic,” he said. “Frankly, the intellectual dishonesty of the gun control crowd is the real public health crisis.”

The initiatives in 2014 are just part of a bigger lie and racketeering ring that’s been around for decades. If we turn to Congressional Records on the subject, we can find that on May 15, 1968 while lobbying for the Gun Control Act., similar snake oil was sold to the other legislators by then Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, in the course of this debate, and for the last 6 years as far as I am concerned personally, I have been criticized publicly and privately, indeed put upon in person, because I have proposed a much-needed firearms law to disarm criminals and the demented.

[…]

But no one would contend that all those who masquerade as target shooters, hunters, sportsmen really do wear white hats, that they are really qualified to be a symbol of the American rifleman.

The fact is that large numbers of the untrained, the unskilled, and the unprincipled go about in the garb and under the guise of hunters and sportsmen. There is not a hunter, or law officer, or conservationist in the country who does not know that. They also know that traditional hunting and sporting weapons constantly show up in crimes, and I say crimes of the most heinous variety.

Dodd was using the so-called untrained, unskilled, and unprincipled hunters and sportsmen as a partial scapegoat in his movement to disarm America. The number of “traditional hunting and sporting weapons constantly show up in crimes” does not exactly echo the progressive rallying cry of “We’re not after the hunters or hunting.”

In Dodd’s diatribe he even cited statistics that had numbers and statements that would cause the modern Second Amendment advocate to go “hmmm.”

Firearms have accounted for 792,343 deaths from 1900 through 1966. That is more Americans than were killed in all our wars put together. Think of that and consider this breakdown:

Homicides_____________278, 519
Suicides______________369, 306
Accidents_____________144, 518
Total_________________792,343

Sound familiar? Comparing the number of firearm deaths to the number of American casualties through war is something that pops up all the time, and coincidentally I discussed that the other day. As it happens in Dodd’s case, the numbers seem accurate (as opposed to today’s norm). What’s also interesting is a similar disproportionate number of people were more willing to turn their firearm on themselves rather than their fellow man. It was true between 1900 and 1966, and it’s still true today. Like today, looking at the numbers, the gross majority need to be scrubbed out if we’re going to talk about violent crime, Dodd’s alleged motivation to restrict firearm ownership.

The modern “gun control” zealot ,similar to those of years past, does not do much to address the mental health side of things, and work towards mitigating death by firearm suicide. What did Dodd do to limit that? What did Washington do to limit that? Zero, zip, zilch.

The rhetoric doesn’t change much. The 1968 Gun Control Act didn’t make us any safer than Washington’s 2014 initiatives made them any safer. Dodd didn’t live long enough to see what an abysmal failure his policy really turned out to be. The proof is in the pudding:

Gottlieb opposed both initiatives, and he has been an outspoken critic of other gun laws pushed through the Legislature. CCRKBA’s national headquarters are in Bellevue, just east of Seattle. A check of the FBI annual Uniform Crime Reports shows the number of murders in Washington, and especially Seattle, have gone steadily upwards since the current gun control crusade started eight years ago.

“We warned the public these gun control schemes were wishful thinking at best,” Gottlieb said. “The data provides all the evidence necessary to say anti-gun-rights initiatives and legislation have amounted to snake oil, giving the public a false sense of security while their rights are being steadily eroded.

“Instead of pushing more restrictions like they’re doing right now,” he said, “it is time for gun control zealots to admit they’ve been wrong all along. Extremist gun control has failed miserably for Evergreen State citizens, and the rising body counts prove it.”

All the clichés in the world won’t help atone for the fact that the more restrictions placed on the law abiding, the less of a favorable outcome we’ll have. The rise in firearm related incidents is indicative of the continual failures of the anti-freedom caucus, and how ineffectual their policies are. If so-called “gun control” measures worked, we’d have been over and done with this subject back in the 30’s. Oh no, wait, that time it was for real in ‘68. Machine gun bans? “Hey ‘68, hold my beer, it’s the 90’s and there’s a new Sheriff in town!” So-called assault weapons ban anyone? Yeah, I thought so. None of it actually works and King County’s numbers prove it.