The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

To The Eagle:

I read in The Eagle where Gov. Inslee now seeks to ban “Assault Weapons.” Remember Inslee passed Initiative 1639 which calls any and all semi automatic rifle (one squeeze of the trigger, one shot fired) “Assault Rifles.”

According to the article Inslee and Ferguson say “They want to make mass shootings less likely in the state.”

Makes one think these semi automatic rifles are used a lot in mass shootings, so I did some research.

Well, in 1996 14 year old Barery Loukaiitis brought a 30/30 rifle (this is one of the few rifles Washington State does not consider an “assault rifle”) and two hand guns to school, shot and killed his algebra teacher and two students. I have included this only to show that non-semi automatic rifles are also used in “mass shootings.”

In 2005, 20 year old Dominick Maldonado took a rifle to the Tacoma Mall, shot six people, only one who was seriously injured. No deaths. Maldonado was under a court order not to possess any weapons at the time.

In 2016, 20 year old Arcan Cetin shot and killed five people at the Cascade Mall in Burlington Washington with a “stolen rifle.”

In 2017, 15 year old Calevb Sharpe brought an AR-15 and a handgun to school in Rockford, WA. He killed one person and injured three others.

In 2016, 19 year old Allen Ivanov shot and killed three people at Kamiak High school in Everett.

So, in the past 15 years we have four mass shootings where semi automaric rifles were used to kill nine people. Of the thousands of semi automatic rifles legally owned by citizens in Washington state, the governor wants to ban them because in the past 15 years they were used to kill nine people?

Michael Moneyhan

Puget Island