NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Monday, January 14th, 2013

Gun control supporters rally in Seattle

A large crowd of gun con­trol sup­port­ers, mobi­lized by StandUP Wash­ing­ton, marched from Seattle’s West­lake Park to a ral­ly at the Seat­tle Cen­ter this Sun­day after­noon. The mood was somber, as vic­tims of the Sandy Hook school shoot­ing were remem­bered, but there was also a spir­it of resolve.

The event had a dual pur­pose, to remem­ber, but to also call for action. With Washington’s leg­isla­tive ses­sion begin­ning today, it’s a per­fect time to press leg­is­la­tors for a ban on semi-auto­mat­ic assault weapons. The recent gun tragedy can’t be anoth­er grue­some event that cre­ates words which only dis­solve into inac­tion. We must act.

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StandUP Wash­ing­ton ral­ly at the Seat­tle Cen­ter (Pho­to: Kath­leen Reynolds/NPI)

Wash­ing­ton Cease­fire board pres­i­dent and event orga­niz­er, Ralph Fascitel­li, told the group that the politi­cians we send to Olympia need “polit­i­cal courage” to pass sen­si­ble reg­u­la­tions. He report­ed on a new Wash­ing­ton Cease­fire sur­vey of reg­is­tered state vot­ers that showed a two to one mar­gin in favor of a ban on semi-auto­mat­ic assault weapons.

Rab­bi Ted Fal­con, of the Inter­faith Ami­gos, had a deep­er, more spir­i­tu­al theme. He said that the crowd had assem­bled, “Because something’s bro­ken, and it’s us. We talk about stop­ping vio­lence rather than talk­ing about heal­ing what’s bro­ken. What caus­es us to use these weapons is a lack of pow­er, a lack of voice. Some­thing is broken…and it is our system.”

Offer­ing some hope for change out of Olympia this win­ter was state Sen­a­tor Ed Mur­ray. “We are going to see move­ment in Olympia…It’s going to take time and a lot of work.” Instead of being intim­i­dat­ed by the enor­mi­ty of the chal­lenge, Mur­ray sug­gest­ed that we con­sid­er this quote by French philoso­pher Albert Camus:

Per­haps we can­not pre­vent this world from being a world in which chil­dren are tor­tured. But we can reduce the num­ber of tor­tured children.

This seems like the least a humane soci­ety should strive for.

Sen­a­tor Ed Mur­ray (Pho­to: Kath­leen Reynolds/NPI)

Seat­tle May­or Mike McGinn spoke in favor of a ban on semi-auto­mat­ic assault weapons, clos­ing the gun show loop­hole, pre­vent­ing the men­tal­ly ill from own­ing guns and, with fer­vor, allow­ing cities like Seat­tle to reg­u­late guns with­in their borders.

Gun con­trol sup­port­er and par­ent, Eliz­a­beth Can­ning of Red­mond, said that she came to the ral­ly with her friend because “I want our leg­is­la­tors to know that there is real sup­port for gun con­trol leg­is­la­tion in our state. The tide has turned and I want­ed to be a part of the kick­off for what I hope is a renewed charge in Wash­ing­ton for respon­si­ble poli­cies to reduce gun violence.”

Some atten­dees report­ed a group of guns-rights advo­cates in the front row, has­sling those around them. That’s dis­re­spect­ful behav­ior at a memo­r­i­al event.

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Ral­ly par­tic­i­pants (Pho­to: Kath­leen Reynolds/NPI)

Here’s some­thing to pon­der: In Wash­ing­ton state, near­ly 6,000 peo­ple have been killed by guns in the past decade. That’s more than ten times the num­ber of firearm deaths in Eng­land in the same peri­od, a coun­try with almost eight times Washington’s population.

We’re obvi­ous­ly doing some­thing wrong and it’s time to act. Let’s take a step towards sen­si­ble gun regulations.

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One Comment

  1. Here’s a video peo­ple inter­est­ed in this post may want to watch: How will Mil­i­tary & Police Respond to The Sys­tem­at­ic Gun Grab?

    # by Deone K :: January 15th, 2013 at 12:18 AM

2 Pings

  1. […] by wash­buck­et in The Noon­er | Jan­u­ary 14, 2013 0 By Kath­leen Reynolds A large crowd of gun con­trol sup­port­ers, mobi­lized by StandUP Wash­ing­ton, marched from Seattle’s […]

    Ping from WashBucket – Gun control supporters rally in Seattle :: January 14th, 2013 at 5:24 PM
  2. […] “Gun con­trol sup­port­ers ral­ly in Seat­tle” (North­west­Pro­gres­sive, Jan 14, 2013) […]

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