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.

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.

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.

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.