Washington, D.C. has some of the nation’s most prohibitive gun laws. The District’s civilian disarmament code is so strict, and its application so Byzantine, that law-abiding citizens must wade through months of bureaucratic sewage and pay many hundreds of dollars before they’re allowed to exercise their right to bear arms in self-defense. Washington Times journalist Emily Miller has basically made a career of lampooning DC’s obscene gun regulations, but she’s actually one of the lucky few who made it through the administrative gauntlet. As a result, there are no civilian CCW permits and barely 40,000 legally-owned firearms among the entire District’s population of just over 630,000. And 103 people have been murdered so far in 2013, for a murder rate of 16.3 per 100,000. Meanwhile, out on the left coast . . .
Washington is a shall-issue CCW state with minimal licensing requirements and state firearms law preemption. Washington State’s population is 6.8 million, and the state has issued more than 400,000 CCW permits. Some of those permits were issued to non-Washingtonians, but that still leaves a ton of Evergreen State CCW holders.
Seattle is the biggest city in ‘the other’ Washington, and has a population of approximately 634,000. Of those 634,000 fewer than 25 were murdered, for a homicide rate of 3.79 per 100,000.
If these numbers didn’t already say everything you needed to know about the efficacy of gun control in reducing crime, here’s another bite to chew on: Washington State has added tens of thousands of CCW holders in the last twelve months and the Seattle homicide rate has remained basically unchanged, while Washington, D.C. has zero CCW holders and its homicide rate has edged even higher.
Even if you exclude the Washington Navy Yard shootings (themselves another artifact of foolish ‘gun-free zones’) the District already logged more murders by early December 2013 than it did in all of 2012. If you include the Navy Yard spree shooting, as I think it’s fair to do, the numbers are even more stark: 103 (and counting) in 2013, and only 88 in all of 2012.
The longer the District drags its feet implementing Heller, the more its residents will die. Their families can thank Mayor Vincent Gray and Chief Of Police Cathy Lanier. This disgusting duo has just announced changes to the District’s gun laws, forcing the few gun owners to re-register their firearms, in person, with the Metro Police.
If there’s any good news in this, it’s that Dick Heller is already taking them back to court. Yes, that Dick Heller.
And that Washington state has no state income tax, if you’re thinking of relocating.