Last month U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared firearm violence to be a public health crisis in America. Since 2020, gun violence has been the leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States, and 54% of U.S. adults report that either they or a family member have experienced a firearm-related incident.
In 2023, shots-fired incidents in King County were up 46% over the five-year average, and the number of shooting victims was up 40%. Over half of firearm victims in 2023 were Black men and boys, despite the Black population making up only 7.2% of the population.
In response to this gun violence crisis, King County Executive Dow Constantine launched 100 Days of Action against gun violence on July 11 in partnership with the City of Seattle and community-based organizations.
“Gun violence is a public health crisis that demands urgent action,” said Constantine. “This 100-day, intensive initiative to confront gun violence will expand vital community resources and intervention programs to pave the way for lasting change.”
The initiative has broad support on the King County Council.
“People are scared. People are terrified,” King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay said. “I represent a lot of the communities that I grew up in – South Seattle, Skyway, the Central District – and in each of those places, when I go to a town hall or a community meeting, the number one issue people tell me about is safety, or the lack thereof: that they don’t feel like they can go outside without experiencing shootings and gun violence, that they worry about their children walking to school or hanging out in the neighborhood, and they don’t feel like there is enough being done to keep them safe.”
Zahilay said there are a lot of factors contributing to the current wave of gun violence, including the prevalence of guns, increase in mental health issues, skyrocketing substance use disorders, increase in poverty among certain communities, and violence and gang-related conflicts.
Eleuthera Lisch, the director of the Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention, housed within Public Health–Seattle & King County, also mentioned the Covid-19 pandemic, the proliferation of guns, fear of the unknown, and new technologies such as 3-D printed guns and ghost guns.
“Those that are most marginalized experience the most significant impact of all seemingly intractable social issues and gun violence,” Lisch said. “America has a gun problem, and the communities that are most impacted are not the problem. They’re experiencing what is a national problem, and that is why, again, the Surgeon General’s announcement was so important, and that is also why we each have to take some individual look at how we contribute to that.”
The nuts and bolts of 100 Days of Action
The 100 Days of Action initiative is designed to increase support, harness public awareness, and highlight a variety of solutions for reducing gun violence. The Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention looked at similar intensive efforts to reduce gun violence throughout the country including in Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
Only some parts of the plan will be completed by the end of the 100 days, and the hope is for the county to use this momentum to develop a comprehensive strategic plan for its gun violence prevention efforts.
“100 Days is something meant to mobilize and energize us. It is not a solution in and of itself, and we need ongoing commitment at all levels,” Lisch said. “This is an all-in: everybody has a responsibility, and it’s going to take as long to fix as it took us to get here, if not longer, because we have to overcome a lot of things.”
The plan contains many pieces, including a $1.6 million investment from King County over the three and a half month period: $1 million to expand community-led violence intervention programs and $250,000 for Harborview’s hospital-based intervention program.
The further investment in violence intervention programs will allow them to extend their operations, hours, and staffing. They will be able to offer more intensive youth programming teaching conflict resolution, self regulation skills, and impulse control, helping young people make better decisions. It will also allow them to extend “relentless engagement,” which is frequent contact with young people most likely to be harmed by gun violence.
The further investment in the hospital-based intervention program will allow for more resources to be made available to victims immediately after shootings, supporting their basic needs so they can better focus on healing.
Lisch says the county is in the building phase: “Consistently here, we have had great promise in various iterations. Then divestments happen, political will changes, new administrations come and go, and so we haven’t had the same sort of steady progress.”
Lisch points to gentrification as both an obstacle and a reason for pursuing a more regional approach.
“If folks are limited from access to opportunity, whether it be employment or education or housing or basic needs, then they necessarily are involved in survival-based economies and behaviors, and those are the things that unfortunately contribute to gun violence,” Lisch said.
When people are being displaced and moved around, they may lose access to these basic opportunities and supportive programming, therefore becoming more vulnerable to gun violence.
The County will also be distributing 5,000 gun lock boxes so people can properly secure their guns. A lot of the guns that cause the most harm are stolen, not only from people’s homes but also often from their cars, so giving out lock boxes is a chance to educate people on how to be responsible gun owners and store their weapons safely.
A 2020 study found that 40% of Washington state parents who owned guns stored at least one of their weapons unlocked, and 39% stored at least one loaded. Not only can these guns be more easily accessed or stolen, but guns in the home are an independent risk factor for suicide and unintentional firearm death and injury among children. Lock boxes can prevent children from harming themselves and others with these weapons.
The county will also be partnering with the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) to complete three studies on gun violence in the region that will help inform a longer-term strategic plan. Two reports will be done by early October: a cost of violence analysis and a landscape analysis, which will look at the community’s capacity to provide intervention services, including opportunities for growth. The third report is a problem analysis, which will identify the small percentage of the population that may be most involved in gun violence, allowing strategy to be developed about where to place resources and which interventions to utilize.
“We need to all be more scientific with our prevention strategies,” Zahilay said. “In every case I’ve studied around the country where local government has been able to reduce gun violence, there’s been a formula to it, and that formula begins with the understanding that a tiny sliver of the population is responsible for the majority of the gun violence that we see, and so we need to be focused on that tiny sliver of the population.”
Councilmember Zahilay’s five-point plan
Zahilay proposed an additional $1 million in King County’s supplemental budget for formulating a five-pronged gun violence prevention strategy, which passed last week. This legislation, co-sponsored by Councilmember Jorge Barón, requires King County to develop this strategy by September 20, which will include:
- Creating a Regional Board of Gun Violence Prevention to strengthen collaboration and communication between stakeholders;
- Developing clear protocols for after an incident of gun violence;
- Developing a resource database to support victims, families, and communities impacted by gun violence;
- Creating a plan for how the county will coordinate with other stakeholders to identify people at high risk of being involved in gun violence and offer them resources and support;
- Conducting a comprehensive analysis of existing and possible revenue sources to fund this plan.
“I crafted this legislation based on what I’ve been hearing over years from the impacted communities, first responders, and our community-based organizations that do violence prevention work,” Zahilay said.
“One of the main reasons why I’m pursuing my legislation is because I don’t feel like many well-intentioned people across our whole state are focused on the right thing,” Zahilay continued. “I don’t want to hear and continuously and exclusively co-sign legislation that just puts up barriers for the general public to access guns. I want to be hyper-focused on people who are most at risk for shooting or being shot. That’s where I want the majority of our resources and our attention to go.”
One of the key components of violence prevention work is securing steady, on-going funding, as is reflected in the fifth point of Zahilay’s framework.
“The truth is, when we’re talking back to the cost of violence prevention and intervention work, it’s a fraction of the cost of what homicide costs,” Lisch said. “So we’re encouraging elected leaders. The end of the 100 days will result in a legislative agenda for the state of Washington, and we certainly want to compel the state to invest and to deal with regressive tax laws that prevent us from actually generating revenue that pays for this work.”
Zahilay says he’s become more optimistic about securing funding because he’s seeing more of a willingness to get creative. “I think there are ways to identify different pots of money and strategically connect them to gun violence prevention, and I want more of that to happen,” he said.
The Crisis Care Centers levy, the Best Starts for Kids levy, the Veterans and Seniors and Human Services levy, and the upcoming Harborview tax are examples of potential funding sources that might have a nexus with gun violence prevention, Zahilay said.
“We know gun violence prevention should be the top priority for any level of government, and we want to make sure our funding streams represent that level of priority,” Zahilay said at the press conference for the 100 Days of Action.
Lisch talked about looking for multiple funding sources, including philanthropy, federal, state, and municipal dollars. “We can braid and blend our way to sustainable funding,” she said. “But it takes action at all levels.”
Seattle’s investments in youth mental health
In last fall’s budget, the Seattle City Council approved a small increase in the JumpStart payroll tax to generate $20 million to spend on student mental health, which is both negatively impacted by local incidents of gun violence and can be a driver of that violence. This investment has also been touted in relationship with the 100 Days of Action.
As part of Seattle’s mid-year supplemental budget process, Mayor Bruce Harrell has announced his proposal to spend $10 million for this purpose, only half of what was originally allocated. $2.4 million will be going for telehealth therapy, and $2 million will be going to youth violence prevention programs. The remaining $5.6 million will be spent on new mental health counselors beginning in January 2025 for the 21 school-based health centers in junior high and high schools, as well as a health care coordinator.
In a budget meeting last week, Budget Chair Dan Strauss explained the discrepancy between the original intended investment and the actual plan, saying that usually funding is passed for already existing programs, whereas this funding was passed before the youth mental health program was set up. He praised the Mayor’s Office for their work.
“Within six months, you have developed a very robust program that I believe will create good outcomes,” Strauss said. “And I just want to take that moment to compliment you, because it is not necessarily easy to do it that quickly.”
Strauss added he’d “love to have $20 million worth of spending to be here and ready” but wanted to make sure the programs are well-tuned.
Councilmember Tammy Morales pushed back against the idea of not spending all available resources. She proposed they negotiate directly with the schools and community-based organizations to help get the full $20 million out the door.
“One of the things I hear over and over again from our young people is that they need third places to be that are safe, where there’s activities, there are things for them to do, places for them to hang out that are free,” Morales said. “So I am interested in whether there are other ways for us to use that money to help with skill building or connecting to jobs or apprenticeships or some other way so that we are still moving that money out the door to support young people, even if it’s not very specifically for mental health.”
Morales’s suggestions are in line with the report on student mental health recently finished by the city’s Innovation and Performance team, which said that youth mental health is supported by lower tier supports such as enrichment programming, skill development, and learning in affinity groups. The report says, “A review of the research shows that enrichment programs can help prevent adverse mental health outcomes and increase overall well-being for all students.”
One of the report’s specific recommendations was to invest more in enrichment programs that “address the nature deficit.”
The committee will hold a second hearing on the mid-year supplemental budget with a possible vote on August 7, when they will decide whether to spend the full amount originally allocated for youth mental health. There is a planned final vote on August 13 ahead of the council’s summer recess.
Meanwhile, officials hope the 100 Days of Action will galvanize movement that will lead to a longer-term strategic plan and reduced gun violence in the region.
“Gun violence affects us all, directly or indirectly, and we will only succeed in addressing it if we work together,” Lisch said.
Amy Sundberg is the publisher of Notes from the Emerald City, a weekly newsletter on Seattle politics and policy with a particular focus on public safety, police accountability, and the criminal legal system. She also writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. She is particularly fond of Seattle’s parks, where she can often be found walking her little dog.