King County Executive Dow Constantine.
City Attorney Peter, Pete Holmes.
Council Member Lorena Gonzalez.
And UW Medicine's Dr. Fred Rivera.
Harborview Medical Center is owned by King County and part of UW Medicine.
We are the only level one adult and pediatric trauma center for adults and kids for burns as well as trauma for four states.
We serve Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho.
That means we are the best prepared medical center and at the front line in the region to provide life-saving care to adults and children who suffer critical injuries such as gun wounds.
At Harborview, we're devoted to injury prevention and research as well.
In the case of guns, we know that many accidental shootings and suicides are preventable.
All it takes is a simple action.
We need to store the guns safely and securely.
We are fortunate that our city leaders recognize this problem and I applaud them for their efforts to make our community safer.
I also want to thank Dr. Rivera for his lifelong work to advance gun safety at the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center.
Finally, thank you for being here this morning to help us address this important issue of gun safety.
I'm pleased to introduce Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan.
Thank you so much, Paul, for letting us be here today.
I want to thank the leaders who are here with us and standing with us.
I also want to acknowledge Councilmember Sally Bakeshaw, who's here and wasn't mentioned, and of course Chief Best, who is here.
We are doing this here at Harborview because Harborview really has been the front lines, but also the leader on this issue.
I want to thank them for their incredible team.
I was just here over the weekend when we had a firefighter who suffered a heart event and a thing and literally Harborview saved his life.
And we know from gunshot victims that one of the reasons we have such a low rate of fatalities here is because of the great work that Harborview Medical Center does.
So thank you very much for hosting us today.
I'm really grateful that everyone is here today.
I am acting as mayor only for the safety and health of our city and our county.
And so honored that Executive Dow Constantine is joining us also to show that we believe as a community we can do better for safety for our community.
Our country, our city and our county are in the grips of a public safety and public health crisis of gun violence.
And all After that, more than 30,000 Americans are killed with a gun every year.
30,000 Americans.
So many of these gun tragedies can be prevented.
In Washington State, a child or teen under the age of 17 is killed by gunfire every nine days.
Think of that.
Every nine days, a child in Washington state is killed.
And it's happening right here in the city of Seattle.
Just recently in February in South Park, Dallas Esparza, only 16 years old, lost his life to gun violence.
Two weeks ago at Leschi, a group of friends gathered.
There was gunfire and a 15-year-old girl was shot in the back and hurt very badly.
We now have students that are becoming the mass shooting generation, and that is wrong.
Their message to us as leaders has been clear.
We have failed them and we must act.
They are telling us that our grief, our thoughts, and our prayers are not enough.
They're often too little and too late.
They want us to do more to protect them so that their schools, their neighborhoods, and the places that they are are not places that are lockdowns and places of tragedy where they lose their friends.
On March 8th, I hosted a town hall with some of our youth.
And some of the comments out of that town hall I think were both poignant and very sad and telling.
You heard children who were talking about how their schools did not feel safe to them.
Just in practicing their active shooter drills, it made them worry.
When they gather in places that used to be places of joy, they're looking for where the exit doors are in case something happens.
And you heard about youth talking about how they don't even feel safe in their neighborhoods.
This Saturday, we will see many people march throughout this country.
Students have taken the lead and we'll have them march for our lives.
They will continue to demand action.
I stand with them and I know we all here literally stand with them and support them.
We will lift up their voices for better public safety and gun safety in this country.
We reject the NRA's very dangerous belief in an America where everyone is armed, but no one is safe.
We will reject their mantra that it's not the time to talk about gun safety.
It is absolutely the right time to talk about gun safety and policies that we can do.
And I say that as a mom, a mom who was so proud of her son for walking out and standing up for an end to gun violence.
I say that as a person who lost a dear friend, Tom Wales, to gun violence.
I say it as a prosecutor who prosecuted people for gun violence and as a criminal defense lawyer represented people, victims of gun violence.
I also say it as someone who believes strongly in the Second Amendment.
Responsible gun owners lock up their guns.
So the actions we will take in Seattle and the executive will address how they may be able to do what they will be able to do in the county is simple.
We will require that lost or stolen guns are reported within 24 hours.
In 2014, Washington voters approved a statewide initiative to require criminal background checks for all gun sales.
But unfortunately, there are steps that have not been taken that should be taken.
Our state legislature was unable to pass certain legislation.
More than now, we know we need to act.
Unfortunately, Seattle cannot act on its own in many areas.
At the urging of the gun lobby, Washington state is one of those states that preempts local leaders from taking actions to prevent gun violence in many ways.
It is irresponsible and it is increasing violence in cities across America.
But there are things we know we can do under state law, we must do and we will do.
And those actions will make people safer.
I simply refuse as mayor anymore to be in the position where all I can tell grieving parents, brothers and sisters that there's nothing we can do.
There is and we will act.
So today we are announcing a number of steps that we're taking Very honored to be here with Councilmember Gonzalez, who has led the way on anti-violence measures, both before she became an elected official and as an elected official, and will help guide these things through the City Council, as well as Councilmember Bagshaw.
First, we'll be working with them to require that all firearms must be stored safely.
We know for a fact that unsecured, unsafely stored guns lead to public safety tragedies.
They end up on the black market.
They end up as crime guns.
And often those unstored guns are used either in suicides that could be prevented or get in the hands of children who get injured when they shouldn't.
We know that in 2015, it was estimated that about 150,000 adults in King County reported keeping a firearm unlocked in their home.
Last year alone, just in Seattle, there were 250 guns that were reported stolen.
And we know from our databases and from our law enforcement, as Chief Best will talk about, that there's many more guns that are stolen that are never reported.
Our proposal will also increase the civil penalties for people who do not fulfill their legal responsibility to store their gun safely or to report a stolen gun.
Let me be clear.
Legal gun ownership will remain completely intact.
The owners of guns will still be able to own, possess, and travel with their weapons.
But when they are away from their weapons, we will require them to store them safely.
In the coming months, I will be working with the City Attorney Holmes and Council Member Gonzalez to develop the specifics of the legislation.
I've been clear that when we do legislation like this, we want to make sure we get it right.
So we will be doing outreach to a number of people, including gun owners, public health people, schools and others, to make sure we get this right.
This is all about public safety and public health.
That is what we are trying to do.
The other thing we will be doing, and one reason we have Dr. Rivera here, is to support our gun violence survivors.
We will be investing revenues from our guns and ammunition tax into the University of Washington and Harborview Medical Center's Injury Prevention and Research Center.
We have seen amazing results already with those funds.
And Dr. Rivera has studied this public safety issue for years.
I'll let him describe that more.
But we think this is the best use of those resources.
Third, to ensure that our extreme risk protection orders can be used more effectively, we will be working with law enforcement to make sure that people understand what that law does and how families can use it to protect themselves.
The law was approved by the voters in 2016, and since it's been enforced in our city alone, 37 guns have been taken from people who at that moment in time presented a risk to themselves or others.
Those could be 37 or more tragedies that we prevented with this law.
We will do more to educate people on this and make sure that people understand what they can do under that law to keep themselves and their families safe.
We should not pretend for one minute that the level of carnage that we are seeing in our country is inevitable, is normal, or cannot be prevented.
It can.
It is just wrong.
We have to move beyond just thoughts and prayers and grief to action.
We cannot allow the level of violence we are seeing in our schools and our neighborhoods to become normal.
It is not normal, and it is not right.
That's why I'm taking these actions today together with my colleagues.
And at this moment in time, I'm going to turn it over to Pete Holmes.
We'll have remarks from a number of people, and then we'll take some questions.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mayor Durkin.
I'm proud to stand here with you, Mayor, and our city council as we go forward with advancing all the protections that we can possibly offer to our citizens.
I'm very proud of the work that has been done here at Harborview and want to echo that not everything is protected, is preempted, excuse me, that we can, as the work that former council member Tim Burgess was able to usher through our Gun Violence Prevention Act, Our tax, that is, it survived preemption challenges by the NRA and related interests.
Last year we won an eight to one Supreme Court decision affirming our right to do that.
And my office will work closely with the mayor and the council to make sure that we come up with similar legislation and defend the inevitable challenges that come forward.
I'd also like to point out, this is a nationwide movement.
Fellow prosecutors in the organization I'm in, Prosecutors Against Gun Violence, will be at D.C.
in the Capitol tomorrow to champion, again, further sane gun legislation at the national level.
It is our second visit to the Capitol this year, and so we will keep that front up.
And it is a broad-based, prosecution- and law-enforcement-oriented drive.
I do want to point out very quickly that there are things that we're doing right now with the existing authority we have.
In 2014, our state legislature passed a law that prohibits anyone that's subject to a domestic violence protection order to surrender their firearms.
And for years, as we all know, there was no mechanism for ensuring that surrender.
And so we needed to make sure that there was coordination between agencies that were responsible that had jurisdiction to enforce these laws, these orders.
And we have been making great strides in that area.
In 2015, 54 firearms were surrendered out of nearly 1,000 surrender orders.
In 2016, it was 124. And then the city of Seattle last year, in July starting, funded, and again in January, some additional funding was provided by King County and the King County Sheriff's Office.
The council, the mayor's office, my office, and the Seattle Police Department, thanks to leadership from Carmen Best and others, have formed what's called the Regional Domestic Violence Firearms Enforcement Unit.
And from my office, Assistant City Prosecutor Chris Anderson is here today.
The pilot, since that pilot started in July of 17, enforcing extreme risk protection orders is also on our docket, and domestic violence protection orders.
The unit has now recovered over 200 firearms since July of last year, with more firearms recovered in 2015. That's more than in 15 and 16 combined.
Now, more recently, more recent events.
When a high school student threatened to shoot up Garfield High School just days after the Parkland shootings, our regional domestic violence firearms unit was proactive.
They went out and recovered firearms from that student's home, despite resistance from the parents.
It was not as a punitive measure, but to keep the community safe.
Now we know that 54% of domestic violence homicides are committed by someone previously prohibited from possessing a firearm.
75% of firearm deaths are suicides.
This unit I've just described is proactively going out in the street and removing firearms from individuals at risk to themselves and to others.
This unit is keeping victims safe and saving lives.
and we're just getting started.
The unit has become a national model for how you implement existing gun laws, and we're looking forward to working with the mayor and city council to expand this program.
Thank you all.
Thank you.
I also want to acknowledge that former council members Burgess and Sally Clark are here and want to thank them for their leadership on this issue over many years.
And now Council Member Gonzalez has some remarks for you.
Thank you.
Good morning.
I am proud to stand here today as what will be the prime sponsor of this critical public safety legislation.
With this new law, we as a city take a step towards keeping our children and broader community safe.
In King County, over 40% of adults who own firearms and have them stored in or around the home leave them unlocked and unsecured.
As the chair of the City Council's Public Safety Committee, I hear stories from parents worried about guns in the homes of their kids' friends.
It has become all too common for parents to wonder if their child's play date will end disastrously because of an unsecured gun in another's home.
It's a worry that resonates with me.
I grew up in rural central Washington where guns were in my home and in the homes of my friends.
My father always safely stored his guns and his ammunition in a secure and safe place that was only accessible to him.
It's a practice I wish other parents had also used.
Even though my high school days are history now, I still recall being at high school parties, and at one party in particular, having to hit the deck at the sounds of shots ringing in the air.
My own personal experience with guns and gun violence and guns being in the hands of teenagers is still vivid.
In my case, I attended a party with over 50 teenagers, all of them my friends.
When we all suddenly heard the pop, pop, pop, we all knew that we needed to hit the deck.
And that feeling of not being able to sink any further into the cold ground is one that I cannot forget.
That was over 20 years ago.
And just two weeks ago, I know that there was a group of students right here in the city of Seattle experiencing that same reality that I experienced long ago.
And this legislation we are saying enough is enough.
Our proposal to require gun owners to safely store their firearms will prevent Children from accessing guns.
It will reduce accidental firearm injuries and deaths.
It will prevent preventable suicides of youth.
It will reduce the chances of sending dozens of youth scrambling for cover because one of their peers accessed a gun that they have no legal right to purchase.
In Seattle, we are proud to be a city taking tangible action on gun violence.
First, we were the first city to conduct basic research on gun safety, which happened as far back as 2013. And those findings are clear.
Gun violence begets gun violence.
In 2015, we were the first city to pass a tax on gun and ammunition sales, thanks to the leadership of former Councilmember Burgess, who really led the effort in that area.
Those funds have been designated to support prevention research for gun violence, and Mayor Durkin say today that we're going to continue to make those important investments because we know that those investments will help people with firearm injuries and will help to inform us as policymakers what we can do better to keep our community safe.
We've passed funding to create and implement a regional domestic violence firearms surrender program.
And you heard City Attorney Pete Holmes talk about the importance of that work and how we are leading the nation and the region on those efforts.
We've also passed a resolution to require that the Seattle Police Department destroy no longer needed firearms rather than selling those firearms.
And the legislation we are announcing today is yet another step forward for the city of Seattle in our effort to prioritize the public safety and health of all of our families.
Last week, along with the mayor and many of my colleagues, I joined thousands of students at the University of Washington who walked out of school to make their voices heard.
I was inspired by the thousands of students, student voices speaking up to end gun violence.
And many, many thousands of miles away down in Santa Monica, I was also inspired by the fact that my 11-year-old nephew, Ben, also participated in the walkouts in his own public school.
And it is a reminder to me that whether you have children or not, we all have nieces and nephews and friends that we love who are affected by this issue every day who are terrified about what it means to wake up in the morning, walk to school and be in a classroom because of gun violence.
The City Council and the mayor are taking seriously the call to action that we're hearing from parents and youth in our city and across the nation.
And we must act where we can act.
And I believe that this is an area where we can and must act.
I want to thank Mayor Durkan for her leadership and vision in terms of advancing this particular piece of legislation.
I want to thank the city attorney for his wise counsel and guidance.
And I want to thank our agency partners across King County and the state of Washington who have been supportive of local policies that keep all of our communities safe.
And of course, I want to thank the researchers The physicians the advocates the public health advocates and community members who are truly tireless in their efforts to ensure that we have real stories of impact and Solutions that we know can and will save lives right here in the city of Seattle and across Across the region.
I look forward to working with the mayor on this legislation and with the city attorney I look forward to working with my colleagues on City Council to make sure that we have a common-sense solution, a common-sense public health solution to what is a critical public safety issue in our city.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much Councilmember Gonzalez for your leadership.
I now would like you to hear from Chief Best who will give you some more information on what we're doing on the law enforcement side.
Well, good afternoon, everybody.
I'm just honored to be here with such an esteemed group of folks.
As the mayor mentioned earlier, nothing is more important than safety and the health of our community.
City Attorney Holmes, that is, talked about the domestic violence protection orders, but I want to talk about the extreme risk protection orders, ERPO, as they're often called.
They are commonly referred to as ERPO, and they are the product Initiative 1491, a citizen's initiative that is designed to prevent tragedies and save lives.
Here's how they work.
A family member or a police officer can petition the court for an extreme risk protection order to temporarily restrict access to guns in cases where there is a threat of suicide or violence.
Seattle police officers are trained and ready to assist with the paperwork.
URPOs must be supported by evidence before they are granted by the court and served by officers.
These are temporary orders, and they last for a year.
This is a court proceeding, and all parties involved are afforded due process.
To date, we have served about 20 extreme risk protection orders, and we estimate about 70 guns have been removed.
A majority of these orders have been processed by a crisis response unit, and I want to make sure I call out Sergeant Eric Piskoski.
Come over here.
Sergeant Eric Piskonsky, he's here today.
He is the sergeant who's in charge of that unit.
Every day, he and five officers and a mental health provider go out on the ground each day and help serve these orders.
So I thank you.
I'm glad you'll be here.
If you have questions, you can talk about that.
This system works.
In one case, a man threatened to shoot members of his church and the resulting investigation and ERPO led to criminal charges and to the seizure of an AR-15.
In another case, a man who had been served with an ERPO order tried to defeat the system and buy a new gun.
His purchase was flagged and the transaction was denied and charges were forwarded to the prosecuting attorney's office.
I support this initiative wholeheartedly.
I can't help but think how things might have been different had ERPO existed six years ago when the Cafe Racer tragedy occurred.
A timely order and a gun removal order could have saved the lives of six men and women.
We'll never know because we didn't have the opportunity then.
From Columbine to Newtown to Parkland, we are constantly reminded that extreme risk protection orders are more important than ever.
These protection orders won't prevent every act of gun violence, but we know they are already making a difference.
Remember, 70 guns are already off the street in just a short time.
We ask people to make sure that they take action.
If they fear gun violence or suicide, call 911. Let our officers know what is happening.
We can help.
If appropriate, petition for extreme risk protection order will be sought and we can help people through that process.
More information on ERPO can be found at Seattle.gov forward slash ERPO.
So we just were here to help and support this.
We feel this is very important.
We want to prevent gun violence.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Chief Best, and now it's really my honor and privilege to introduce the County Executive, Dow Constantine, who is working on these issues both when he was in the state legislature and as County Executive.
And as we know, the best approaches on public health and public safety have to be regional.
So with that, I'll give you our County Executive, Dow Constantine.
Thank you, Mayor Durkin.
A couple weeks ago, I was enjoying a brief but long overdue vacation out of town with my wife and our little three-year-old daughter and we were sitting around a table at a cafe and I was marveling at how quickly her mind is developing.
It's a remarkable time in a child's life and appreciating in that moment the privilege of being her dad.
And right then, I got a text from a friend of mine who said, Dow, I need your help.
I don't know what to do.
My daughter was shot last night.
His daughter was the girl who was shot in Leschi.
He shared with me that she was going to recover, but he was feeling helpless.
was feeling like we needed a way for him to begin to change the dynamic that allowed his daughter to become a victim.
But then I was at my alma mater last week, West Seattle High School, to lend my support to the very impressive student walkout.
It was genuinely inspirational.
This is a moment.
This is a defining moment where we, led by our youth, are refusing to be helpless anymore.
The powerful forces that have arrayed to obstruct common-sense gun laws are feeling the blowback from our decades of pain and frustration.
Now is the time to be bold.
And I want to commend the bold actions of Mayor Durkan to require safe storage for all Seattle gun owners.
In King County, we have been promoting safe storage countywide for years.
Our Lock It Up program is a partnership between public health, local retailers, and law enforcement to encourage owners to safely store firearms locked and unloaded.
We know that more than 50,000 adults in King County do not properly store their guns, and in fact, Alarmingly, many of those households have guns that are loaded and unlocked and in the presence of children.
We know this because we gather data.
It is part of our public health approach to gun violence that's made all the more difficult by the federal ban on research by the CDC into firearms.
In this nation, in this state, we have far to go.
I went to Olympia to testify this session in support of two gun regulation bills.
Senate Bill 5463, which required safe storage of firearms by gun owners and mandated dealers to offer lock boxes or trigger locks to firearms buyers.
and Senate Bill 6146 to finally allow local governments to pass common sense gun laws.
Well, neither of those measures made it out of committee.
We must do better.
Mayor Durkan, you will certainly, almost certainly be in for a fight.
I will stand with you.
The county will stand with the City of Seattle.
We will stand with all those who say to the NRA and to those who do the NRA's bidding, enough.
Gun violence is a scourge on our community.
And to fight it, we are forced to be creative.
In the last county budget, I secured funding to increase enforcement of orders to surrender weapons and protection orders, including extreme risk protection orders, particularly in domestic violence cases.
The county council approved $600,000 for that work and an additional $100,000 for our Lock It Up campaign.
Across this region, we can and must do more to stop the killing.
Today is a good day and I will work with the leaders of all of our other 38 cities and with the county prosecutor to ensure that more good news will follow.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Executive Constantine, for your leadership on this issue.
And now, just to really hone in once again and to center this on a discussion about why this really is a discussion about public health and public safety, I want you to hear from Dr. Fred Rivera, who knows more about these issues in that frame than probably anyone in the country.
Thank you.
Thanks very much.
I'm a pediatrician here at our level one trauma center, which takes care of adults and children.
And you often seen firsthand the devastating consequences of the gun violence epidemic that we're seeing across the country.
Part of my role here at Harborview Medical Center is to care for these victims of firearm injuries.
And in both young children and adolescents, these incidents are nearly always the result of having a gun that has not been safely secured and stored in home.
Time and time again, we see young children getting access to guns who do not understand the consequences of an accidental discharge, or adolescents after suicide attempts with a parent's unsecured gun.
These injuries are often life-changing, if not life-ending, for the youth and their families.
We know that safe storage can prevent these tragedies.
A study conducted here at the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center found that safe storage of guns decreased the risk of both accidental injuries and suicides to youth by 73%.
And if both the guns and the ammunition were locked up, the decreased risk was 78%.
And these gun boxes work for both long guns, rifles, and handguns.
And the data supporting safe storage of guns is really overwhelming.
Let me give you a few examples.
A report by the Secret Service found that in 65% of school shootings, the shooter used a gun obtained from his home.
And this was the case for the 2014 tragic shooting at Maryville High School where that young man obtained the gun from his dad.
Each year in our country, approximately 2,000 children are injured or killed as a result of gun violence.
Each year, there are over 380,000 guns reported stolen.
And as the mayor and the chief have said, these guns are much more likely to be involved in crime.
We've touched a little bit on the suicide issue.
Across the country, of the 38,000 gun deaths that happen each year, 60% are suicides.
In the state of Washington, 75% are suicides.
The research done here at Harborview has shown that if you try to take your life with a gun, it's going to be fatal 93% of the time.
Well, if you try to take your life with pills, it's going to be successful 2% of the time.
So the means trying to kill yourself really do matter.
Recording guns to be locked up in no way is a violation of the Second Amendment.
But we can all agree that having guns be locked up and kept out of the hands of individuals who would harm themselves or others is something that is important.
Having guns stored in a lockbox still allows the guns to be available for self-protection, which is the most common reason that people own guns.
And let me just give you a quick demonstration.
Within seconds, you can actually get access to the gun.
At your bedside, for self-protection, locking it up does not obviate that ability to use it for self-protection.
Harborview has joined Seattle Children's and Public Health Seattle King County in developing safe storage giveaway events.
We've had 14 of these around the state and have given away over 4,000 gun lockboxes.
If you purchase a lockbox and get it from a business that participates in the King County Lock It Up campaign, you can get a discount.
This new safe storage law outlined by the mayor will really work in conjunction with these giveaway programs and the education programs to further help reduce firearm deaths.
These policies have been enacted based upon gun research that we and others have been conducting.
Unfortunately, since 1996, for the last 22 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, our nation's prevention agency, has not been allowed to fund gun research.
This is because of research conducted here and published in 1993 and one of the best medical journalists in the world, the NRA didn't like that, was able to get Congress to restrict funding of gun research by the Nation's Prevention Agency.
After the tragedy in Newtown, Seattle became the first city in the country, the first city to fund gun research.
They continue to fund gun research, as the mayor has pointed out.
And that research and mayor's commitment to this will allow us to further study policies that really will help our leaders make a difference in reducing the toll from gun violence.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Doctor.
I'm going to take some questions from you, but I want to make a couple points just so we're clear is this is not an anti-gun measure.
This is a gun safety measure.
And I believe strongly in the Second Amendment.
I believe in people's right to bear arms.
But any responsible gun owner knows they should keep their weapon locked when it's not on them and keep it away from children.
Second, I want to say this.
We also understand, and I think Chief Best would tell you, that this is not just part of the strategy.
We understand that we will still continue to enforce our gun laws and make sure that those who would use guns inappropriately will be held accountable.
All of you know that as U.S.
Attorney, that was an emphasis of our prosecutions for a period of time.
We raised the number of gun prosecutions across the, ours was one of the leading districts in the country.
We know that we have to enforce the laws that we have and we will continue to do so, but that isn't protecting our kids.
That isn't protecting our neighborhoods.
We have to do more.
storing gun safely is part of the solution.
It's not the whole solution.
We very much would like the ability to legislate in other areas so that they would remove preemption.
But we have this authority under the law.
It is not preempted.
So we will move forward with those things we can do to keep our family safe, our kids safe and our neighborhood safe.
So with that, I'll take some questions.
People have it.
Sure.
I mean, we're still we're still working jointly along with our able city attorney on making sure that we have the most defensible version of a piece of legislation.
But it will require gun owners who have guns in their homes.
or their vehicles, and if those guns are not currently in their possession on their person, it will require those individuals to secure, lock up their guns.
And so we're still exploring all of the different contours and fine points of what the legislation could look like, but in general That is what we are going to try to accomplish through this legislation.
And of course, you heard the mayor say that we are going to endeavor to make sure we get it right by engaging gun owners, by engaging public health advocates, by making sure that we are doing the engagement we need to make sure that we have a full understanding of the types of things we need to legislate to to resolve the issue of making sure that children and other individuals who are not supposed to have access to guns don't easily have access to unsupervised, unsecured weapons.
Is that through the threat of a fine, or how are you possibly going to enforce that?
There'll be a number of mechanisms that we can enforce it by.
One of the mechanisms will be that right now there's a law in the books that says if you have a stolen gun, you have a duty to report it.
When guns turn up in crimes, if they're stolen guns, we're seeing many of those guns have not been reported stolen.
So we will both increase the penalties for failing to report, but we will also make sure that we will explore looking to keep people even be liable for what happens with their stolen gun.
if they don't lock it securely or report it when it's stolen.
And so we will not be going into homes.
Um, but we will making sure, you know, that if we see guns that are unattended or we get reports of it, we will follow up on it and we will enforce it.
And I want to emphasize again what Councilmember Gonzalez says is, you know, we will have this period of time to work with a variety of people to make sure the definitions we have under the law are the right ones.
including gun owners and those gun advocates.
I've worked with Alan Gottlieb before.
I will work with him again, because even if they challenge it, I'm very confident that this law will be upheld.
And if you sit quietly with people who own guns, who are responsible gun owners, every one of them will tell you, when you don't have your gun on you, it should be locked up.
That is what responsible gun owners do, and we're going to make it the law.
Can somebody also explain the use of the gun tax revenue?
Because according to the Second Amendment Foundation, Alan Gottlieb, the collections on that have been nowhere near the projections that the city indicated a couple of years ago.
So how is that money going to be used?
How do you factor that in, given it is not paid off for the city in terms of financially?
I would say two things.
Number one is the revenues will be put to use to continue to fund Dr. Rivera's research.
As we heard, shamefully, nationally, the Center for Disease Control is prohibited by law from studying gun violence and its effect on public health.
when we know that it is a huge public health crisis.
And so we in Seattle have led the forefront and we will use those revenues to make sure that we have that good research to make sure that we're doing the things we can do to keep our kids safe, our family safe and our neighbors safe.
And on the on whether it's been successful or not, this was never intended to be a gun control entity.
It was a revenue raiser But if one of the impacts is that there's fewer guns and fewer bullets sold in the city of Seattle, that may not be a bad thing.
As far as enforcement with this law goes, if we're not going into homes and we're not checking cars, is the law to lock up and secure guns more symbolic than anything else?
Absolutely not.
We know from other laws similar to this that there's a variety of ways in which we know that these laws become enforced, self-enforcing, enforced by others.
For example, you know, a number of people when they get divorced now, part of the parenting plans deals with if there's guns in the house, how are they stored.
We know that families on play dates now will ask, does your family have guns?
Are you locking them away?
You know, I got asked that by parents when kids would come to my house for a play date.
So there's a wide range of ways.
But what we will also do is have education with gun shops and others to say, let's educate people about the importance of storage.
Children's Hospital and others and the Alliance for Gun Responsibility have had a great program on that.
We really want to augment that because we want to make sure that all people can take advantage of this, even those that don't live in the city of Seattle, to know the small thing they can do that will really keep them, their families and their neighborhoods safer.
We know time and time again that stolen guns are used for exactly what the doctor described.
Kids get access to them and there's an accidental discharge with a terrible consequence.
or an adolescent who's feeling depressed gets access and does a suicide that's almost always fatal.
So we can make a change on those things.
No one measure, no one measure is going to roll back everything, but we have to act where we can act.
So if the city does get a tip that there's an unsecured gun in a home, say by a neighbor who had their kid over at that house, will we do a home check?
And as a follow-up to Chief Best, does the police department have the resources to uphold this law?
We're going to look as that plays out.
I think that we will have enforcement.
And as mayor, we're going to work with both the police department, but the other areas where we have access to people.
First is education.
The number one thing is education, to tell people the importance of it.
I think most people, if they understand and have the ability to comply, will.
Coupled with that, we want to make sure that we do it equitably.
So those people who may have guns lawfully but have less access to financial resources, we have programs to help them get safe storage.
So if we are at the point of enforcement, we will have good and smart enforcement.
We're not going to tell you exactly today what that's going to look like, but it will be enforced.
There was a mention of 24...
You mentioned liability for those who don't lock up their firearms and don't take care of things.
Are you talking about if, in the hypothetical scenario of say, a kid gets a hold of a parent's unlocked firearm, commits suicide, now you're holding the parents accountable?
Is this...
This is exactly why we have to have a longer discussion with people on this.
But if you wind back the clock and remember the days when you had DUIs and you couldn't hold the bartender liable who over served someone and said, how can you hold them liable for something that someone else does?
What we first have to do is educate.
So let's not jump immediately to enforcement and the horror stories.
Let's start with how do we educate people, not on what you can't do, but what you can do to keep people safe.
So we'll have a longer discussion on what the appropriate remedies are for people who don't follow the law and whether they should be held liable or whether if they lock it up, it's an absolute bar to a claim that they should be held liable.
Today, a person could be sued.
If you're in a home, if someone, if your child's in a home and get access to a weapon and they get hurt from it, there could be a lawsuit against those individuals already today.
So we're not going to create anything new, but what we do want to do is make this an obligation.
If you have a gun and you don't have it on you, lock it up.
It's easy.
Dr. Rivera, could you show us that one more time so we can all take a second and get ready?
In 10 seconds.
Because that's the pushback that we're hearing.
No.
Well, it's because it hasn't been pre-set.
Could you indulge us one more time?
It's pretty fast.
Because that's the pushback.
Like on social media, when we're talking about this, people want to have that gun on their nightstand.
Put it in there.
How confident are you about withstanding a court challenge?
Very confident.
You know, we're very mindful that what the state law prohibits is you can't restrict someone's ability to buy, sell, transport, and the like.
Everyone can still own a gun.
They can still carry a gun.
They can still transport their gun.
But if you leave it behind, you've got to lock it up.
So we are not infringing on a single right guaranteed either under state law or under the state or federal constitutions.
Again, all of us believe in the Second Amendment.
We understand that that is part of our country's framework, but that has nothing to do with when you don't have your gun on you, when you're not bearing your arms, what do you do with it?
You lock it up.
Thank you very much.
We appreciate you being here.
Thank you so much for doing this.