Treat youth gun violence with the urgency it demands

The fatal mass shooting at the Bite of Seattle festival Sunday is indicative of a decades-long national problem — the abundance of firearms in the wrong hands. This year, 322 mass shootings erupted in the United States. 

It’s a serious local problem. The Seattle Police Department confiscated 1,523 firearms from the streets in 2025, up from 875 in 2024.

Youth gun violence speaks to the availability of handguns, the lack of parental or adult guidance, and the failure among lawmakers in creating sensible laws that treat gun violence, and prevention of it, with the seriousness it deserves.

At Seattle Center, three people were killed and at least four wounded, including a 2-year-old boy. One of the suspects in the deadly assault is 15. Another suspected shooter who suffered fatal wounds was 19.  According to police, the 15-year-old was in possession of a “ghost gun,” a Polymer80 9-mm handgun with an extended magazine, when he was arrested at the scene. A ghost gun is a firearm that is partly assembled at home and has no serial number.

The King County Prosecutor’s Office has made strides in keeping guns away from minors. Two years ago, County Prosecutor Leesa Manion established the Safer Schools Strategy as a relationship builder between school districts, the prosecutor’s office and police. It has opened communication channels, notifying all partners when a student is charged with a felony, which wasn’t happening before. But Manion says the program needs additional funding.

The number of youth possession cases has dropped. In 2024, the prosecutor’s office filed 111 cases against teens for unlawful possession of firearms; in 2025 it filed 102; and so far this year, 47 cases have been filed.

Yet, the state Legislature has failed to do its part.

Under current state law youths under the age of 18 must be convicted five times of unlawful possession of a firearm before they can be ordered to serve more than 30 days in juvenile rehabilitation. That needs to change.

House Bill 1536 would have reduced the five convictions threshold to three. Though the Legislature has passed other gun laws, it failed to act when it came to children in crises.

In February 2025, during its first attempt at passage, there were seven teens who had recently been convicted of unlawful possession as a juvenile. They were given 0-30 days under the law, only to be later charged with either murder or first-degree assault in separate cases.

Yet the House human services committee chair, Steve Bergquist, did not deign to hold a hearing on the bipartisan bill either that year or this year.  

Everyone deserves a second chance and minors, even a third chance. But for a child possessing a gun those chances should stop at three. When youths decide to arm themselves, that is a more serious problem than can’t be fixed in 30 days. Early intervention with long-term solutions that involve assessment, treatment and rehabilitation are needed.

Another solution has been the use of extreme risk protection orders in which a judge signs an order to remove a firearm from the home where a juvenile might have access to it. This past school year Manion’s office went to court for 10 ERPOs with petitions served on parents to get guns away from juveniles.

The prosecutor’s office said the 15-year old suspect in the Seattle Center shooting had never shown up in their system. But by the time he’d acquired an illegal handgun and identified a target, it’s likely that multiple adults and systems had failed him.

When those failures lead to deaths, all of society must take inventory of what it must do to save all lives, young and old.