Two woke Democrat State Reps in Washington State say the enhanced penalties for drive-by shootings are racist because the offenders are “predominately young and Black”.
And thus, they are pushing legislation to reduce the penalties for it.
This ain’t a parody from the constantly hilarious Babylon Bee, it’s actually being pushed.
The proposed legislation being pushed by Democrat State Reps. Tarra Simmons and David Hackney would eliminate drive-by shootings as the basis for elevating a first-degree murder charge to aggravated murder in the first degree, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
A local NBC-affiliate reports that:
“Drive-by shootings were added as an aggravating factor in 1995, at a time when Washington state was experiencing a surge in gang-related crime, according to a 1997 annual report put out by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC).
Per the report, there were three gang-related homicides in Washington state in 1991, followed by 17 in 1992, 31 in 1993, 26 in 1994, and 13 in 1995.”
Other aggravating circumstances that qualify for mandatory life sentence without parole include murder-for-hire, rape, kidnapping, and arson.
Rep. Simmons says in a statement to KTTH that the aggravated enhancement on drive-by shootings is racist because it’s targeted at gangs “that were predominately young and Black."
She says “it’s clear that [this aggravated classification] was targeted at gangs that were predominantly young and Black,” arguing that it’s an example of “systemic racism.”