Gun violence summit in Seattle looks for new solutions
Oct 29, 2014, 3:55 PM | Updated: 5:51 pm
After yet another deadly school shooting, it’s easy to just say: ‘there’s nothing we can do.’ Dozens of leaders from local to federal, cops to doctors to prosecutors, are looking for a new approach.
The shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School last week was not the impetus for the Firearm Prevention Leadership Summit Wednesday in Seattle.
“Perhaps most chilling is the fact that between these high-profile public shootings, like the one we saw last week, there is an epidemic of firearm-related deaths and injuries that are almost entirely overlooked,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said he gets a police briefing every morning.
“And almost every single morning, I will read about the use of guns in some way in this city.”
Murray wants to use data to develop prevention strategies. He says young people and African-Americans are disproportionately impacted by gun violence. The King County Medical Examiner reports seven in ten gun deaths are by suicide. More than 130 people each year die in the county as a result of firearm use, meaning more people are killed by gun violence than in car crashes, according to data released at the summit.
Constantine and others want to treat gun violence as a public health problem.
“We did that with seat belts in cars, we did that with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, we did that with smoking and started to change the expectations around smoking and help people take better control of their health and their lives. We need to do that here, too,” he said.
Gun control legislation is essentially out of their hands but leaders said they can’t just throw up their arms in defeat.
“We are not going to stand here and say: ‘well, what can be done?’ We must confront this issue head-on by policy making and law enforcement, but also through the community and family conversation,” Murray said.
One conversation starter is why more than 26,000 homes in King County have a loaded, unlocked firearm, Constantine said.
