In order to understand what Democrats are doing to this country, one must first understand that their new push for gun control is just one element of a three-part agenda to reshape day-to-day life in the United States.
Facing a brutal midterm election this fall, they believe that the tragic shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is their opportunity to change the subject. Their problem, however, is that they have already made it too difficult to discuss the gun control issue in isolation, the way they could back in the late 1990s. That’s because today’s Democrats have gone so far to the left, embracing a radical anti-law enforcement and anti-incarceration agenda that has become too big a national news story to hide. At this point, many voters feel unsafe in their communities and know that no number of new gun laws can fix the problem.
In the past couple of years, liberal prosecutors across the country have started habitually reducing charges and asking for light sentences for even the most hardened, recidivistic, violent career criminals — including those who use guns to commit their crimes. An obvious local case with tragic consequences was Fairfax County, Virginia, District Attorney Steve Descano’s decision to let Gerald Brevard off with reduced charges after he burglarized a home, hid his gun in a police cruiser, and allegedly attempted to rape and abduct a woman. Because he was free in a matter of months instead of serving years in prison, Brevard allegedly went on to shoot at least five homeless people, killing at least two.
This sort of catch-and-release policy is going on all over the place, fanning the flames of a major crime wave that is especially plaguing cities. The culprits are not just Descano and other George Soros-funded district attorneys who have been abetting crime waves in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York City, and dozens of other major and medium-sized cities — nor is the problem limited to radicals such as Chesa Boudin, who for his irresponsible negligence as a prosecutor is about to be recalled from the district attorney’s office in San Francisco this Saturday.
No, this highly concerning trend even includes President Joe Biden’s own appointed federal prosecutors in the Department of Justice, who, among other things, deliberately coaxed a judge into letting a killer off the hook based on considerations of “equity.”
Those are the first two legs of this policy stool — hard on honest gun owners, easy on criminals. The Democrats’ third leg is to prevent the police from keeping order. This is part of their overall “defund” agenda, which involves not just money but also impossibly restrictive rules that won’t let police do their job. An excellent example of this has cropped up this spring in Washington state, where a new law is making it easy for criminals to get away with any nonviolent property crime.
Last year, the state passed a law that was supposed to “reimagine policing.” Among other things, it forbade police from engaging criminals in car chases above the speed limit, with only very limited exceptions.
As long as the criminals speed up and refuse to pull over, they can always get away from police, whose hands are completely tied. This law has resulted in a massive surge in auto thefts, according to local news reports, and what some claim is an all-time record. By using stolen vehicles that cannot be traced back to them, criminals can get away with almost anything. They know the law well, so it is now a daily occurrence in many Washington cities and towns for people to just speed up and not pull over for the police. Nearly a thousand people have used this tactic to evade Washington state troopers alone so far this year, to say nothing of local police or sheriffs.
Having enacted this folly and seen its results, a core of Democratic legislators in the state has followed up by using legislative chicanery to prevent its repeal in the state Senate.
And here, the Democrats’ full safety agenda is laid bare. Punish and antagonize law-abiding gun owners, coddle hardened, violent criminals, and tie the hands of police trying to do their jobs.
Voters in Washington can elect better people to office this fall. And voters nationwide need to learn from this poor, aberrant state government’s example. Their fate could be the same if they vote for the wrong candidates.
