‘A two-strike approach’: Seattle Center shooting prompts renewed push to toughen juvenile gun laws

The deadly Seattle Center shooting is fueling a renewed push from Washington State Representative David Hackney to tighten Washington’s juvenile firearm laws, which he said currently allow too many chances before the system intervenes.

Hackney, who represents the 11th Legislative District in South King County, argued that under current law, juveniles caught with guns can cycle through the system multiple times with virtually no consequences.

“In order to get into the criminal justice system for the charge of juvenile in possession of a firearm, you have to have four prior charges,” Hackney said. “The first four times it’s what they call diversion, not criminal justice.”

That means no incarceration, no probation, and no formal supervision, just diversion and a return to the same environment where the offense occurred.

“You basically get sent right back home into the city, the environment you were in when you committed the crime in the first place,” Hackney said.

Seattle Center shooting as a warning

Hackney pointed to the Seattle Center shooting as a tragic example of what can happen when there is no early intervention.

“One of the young men who was [one of] the shooters who was killed had a previous charge of firearm possession. Nothing happened,” he said. “He went back home, picked up another gun, shot three people, and now we got three people dead.”

Hackney said that case and others like it in South King County show why diversion alone is not enough for repeat juvenile gun offenders.

“Had we intervened — because we should have known he’d done it once — if there’s no serious intervention, we should expect him to do it again,” he said. “He went back on the streets, picked up another gun, and now, look at the situation. Three people are dead.”

From five chances to two strikes

Hackney said the current system effectively waits until a fifth gun-possession case before treating the behavior as serious enough for criminal charges. By then, he argued, it may be too late, with many young offenders escalating to more violent crimes or becoming victims themselves.

“What happens with five times? If you wait five times, by the time someone gets to their fifth time, we’re finding that either one, before their fifth time, they’re going to graduate to more serious crimes like attempted murder or murder or assault with a deadly weapon,” Hackney said.

He wants to move in the opposite direction, toward earlier intervention.

Hackney previously tried to lower the threshold so that juveniles would face criminal consequences after three firearm-possession offenses. That proposal did not advance. Now, he said he plans to come back with an even stricter standard: a “two‑strike” approach.

“What I really wanted was two times,” Hackney said. “After your second time, if you’re still running around with a gun, we’ve got a problem that needs to be addressed. So, I’m going to reduce it from three to two, and I’m going to drop the bill again, and I’m going to use the attention that I’ve gotten this year to show my colleagues that people really care about this.”

Early intervention vs. decades in prison

For Hackney, the push is not just about punishment, but about intervening before teenagers end up in the adult system for violent crimes.

“This is about juvenile possession of a firearm. That’s a completely different response,” he said. “If you commit a very serious crime, you get charged as an adult. You get charged as an adult for a serious crime, you end up spending decades of your life as an adult in prison.”

Hackney said giving juveniles multiple gun cases with no meaningful sanction sends the message that it’s not a serious offense … until it’s too late.

“The people that are running around with guns, they need serious intervention,” he said. “They need to be incapacitated. They need a timeout, where hopefully you can provide some counseling, some services to them that get them back on the right track. If you just send them back home again, you should expect it to happen again.”

‘Our job is to respond’

Hackney said the recent media attention after the Seattle Center shooting shows that voters are paying attention to juvenile gun crime and that they expect lawmakers to respond with concrete changes.

“Our job is to address issues that are of concern to our constituents,” he said. “I think the fact that we’re getting this much media attention shows that it is of concern.”

For now, current Washington law still allows four juvenile gun-possession cases to be handled through diversion, with no criminal charges until the fifth offense. Hackney’s upcoming proposal aims to change that, making repeated juvenile gun possession a problem the system must confront much earlier.

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