In the aftermath of the brutal, inexplicable slaying of a Washington state woman who was merely walking her dog and attempting to be a peacemaker in an argument, Seattle talk radio host John Carlson provided a blunt assessment of the disconnect by liberals when it comes to gun-related violent crime in the Jet City.
Carlson was discussing the disturbing case of a 16-year-old who has been charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of 50-year-old BillyJo Perkins. She was trying to intervene in a confrontation in which the teen, identified as Jaden Taylor, was aiming a handgun at a young female outside an apartment complex in Shoreline, located immediately north of Seattle’s city limits, on May 18.
Instead of de-escalation, Perkins was shot three times at virtually point blank range in the chest and abdomen after she grabbed him to pull him away.
The suspect then fled the scene with another person, only to turn up later at a hospital in Edmonds, with what apparently was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police have yet to recover the gun.
On the air, Carlson—a one-time gubernatorial candidate and veteran conservative commentator—had this to say: “We keep hearing that liberals want to stop ‘gun violence.’ That they’re anti-gun. And yet, when you actually catch a criminal in possession of a gun or using a gun or stealing a gun, or in the case of Jaden Taylor, bringing a gun to school, they get diversion.”
Taylor had, according to Carlson, been arrested for brandishing a gun at school, but apparently agreed to attend a “diversion” program and have the charges dropped. He allegedly never showed up for the diversion, and instead was involved with some other youths in what was described as a “vicious” assault on two students off campus, which Carlson said led to the teen’s expulsion.
So here was Taylor, in violation of a state gun law—unlawful possession of a handgun—assaulting a young woman and gunning down an older one.
While gun prohibitionists are keen on ratcheting down on the rights of law-abiding citizens, Carlson observed, “They play down the seriousness of guns when they’re actually being possessed for aggressive purposes by people who are illegally in possession of a firearm.
“Someone please explain the liberal mentality here to me,” he commented. “They want to crack down on your right to have a ten-round magazine in your pistol but when some punk pulls out a gun at school, (the reaction is) ‘Oh, there’s no need to actually charge you with anything, Why don’t we give you diversion?”
“Again, this woman, BillyJo Perkins is dead because of a culture of criminality and brazenness that has grown around the King County juvenile system,” Carlson stated. “This is what they have created with their lenient system. Scary, brazen, vicious, violent juvenile predators.”
Taylor faces charges as an adult because some three decades ago, state law was amended to require 16-year-olds who are charged with first-degree assault or first- or second-degree murder to be charged as adults automatically, Carlson recalled.
While investigators apparently still have not recovered the gun, the case underscores the futility and failure of ten years’ worth of increasingly restrictive gun control laws in Washington to prevent such a crime. Last year, Seattle set a new homicide record, and since 2014—the year voters passed the first of two restrictive gun control initiatives—the number of murders in Washington has doubled, from 172 to 394 in 2022, according to the most recent crime data.
