High-crime areas often look to place the blame in other regions. This is especially true when the high-crime areas also boast a great deal of gun control. Chicago likes to blame Indiana, for example, because Illinois gun laws aren’t stopping bad guys from getting guns. Nevermind that most of those guns are coming off the black market, they still like to blame those pro-gun regions because it makes them look less ineffective.

In Washington, D.C., it’s normal to blame Virginia for their crime problems.

Now, though, Democrats have control of the state and the mayor of D.C. is hoping they’ll pass all the gun control.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) waded into Virginia politics Wednesday as she urged fellow Democratic leaders, newly in control of the state legislature, to follow through on promises to pass gun-control measures to help her city combat surging violent crime.

In a letter to Virginia House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) and Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), Bowser named Virginia as a primary source state for guns used in city crimes. Last year, D.C. police reported 166 homicides, the highest death toll in a decade.

Bowser said that, according to statistics from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, about 41 percent of guns recovered from crimes in the District in 2018 have been traced to Virginia. In 2018, law enforcement agencies recovered a total of 2,095 guns, and ATF traced 599 that were purchased in Virginia, according to ATF statistics the mayor cited in her letter.

Of course, she fails to note whether those were lawful sales or simply where the guns originated.

Then again, she’s also failing to understand that if criminals don’t get their guns from Virginia, they’ll get them from somewhere else instead. The origins of the guns is not the same thing as the origins of the violence itself.

The District of Columbia has a lot of problems. In particular, it has a lot of poverty, gang activity, and a host of other issues that seem out of place when you consider the version of D.C. the average tourist sees. It’s a rough town, even if you never set foot inside the political arena.

Until Bowser and her fellow D.C. officials address that, nothing is going to improve. It doesn’t matter what Virginia does, none of that will have any impact on the crime in the city.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at London. They almost completely removed guns from consideration and guess what happened? Violent crime continued to rise. The bad guys just used knives instead.

At the end of the day, though, violence is violence.

If you want to end it, stop pretending the weapon is to blame. Look at other factors and undermine the mindset that leads to violence in the first place. There are ways to at least try to combat violence. Will Washington officials have the fortitude to even try? Or are they hoping to continue blaming Virginia for their failures like they have in years past?