AN ORDINANCE relating to the safe storage of and access to firearms; adding a new Chapter 10.79 to the Seattle Municipal Code.
Personal share of Senate. Please read the part of the gender equity safe communities new Americans and. Education Committee. The report The Gender Equity Safe Communities in New Americans and Education Committee Gender nine Council 4119 266 relating to the safe storage of and access to firearms. Adding a new Chapter 10.79 to the Center Mr. Code. The Committee recommends the bill passes amended customary. Gonzalez. Thank you, Mr. President. If we can have the floor, if I may ask if the clerk can also read an agenda item ten as I like to discuss these council bills together. Perfect. And you can read the short title if you like. Agenda Item ten Council Bill 119 267 Relating to the reporting of Lost or Stolen Firearms. Committee recommends the bill passed as amended. Excellent customer. Overzealous. Thank you so much. This is Council Bill 119266 and Council Bill 119267. I was thinking that what I would do would be to quickly review each of the bills and then if there were any questions about the bills, I'm happy to take those questions from my colleagues and then open up the floor to any other council members who would like to provide remarks or comments on the bills before before council president calls them to vote. And then I would like to make some closing. Remarks before. Voting occurs. Very good. Very excellent. Okay. Councilman Mike orders. And so I was just going along with it. So I, I do speak in a very direct manner. So I apologize if that did not end with a question mark. It was intended to end with a question mark. Council Bill 119266 requires that guns be secured in a locked container when not in the possession or under the control of their owner or other lawfully authorized user . This legislation creates a civil infraction and fines for improperly storing a firearm when a prohibited person obtains unauthorized firearm access, or when a prohibited person uses a firearm to harm oneself or others. Council Bill 119267 increases the existing fine for failing to report a lost or stolen firearm. Just really quickly, just by way of background for those folks who did not attend a committee hearing, I wanted to just cover some high points of both of these bills. So Council Bill 119266, which we have been referring to as the safe storage bill, has some really key and important definitions that I want to review really quickly . It really centers around who is a lawfully authorized user, who's a prohibited person and who is an at risk person. And we went through the process of defining each of those categories in addition to what our container is, what a minor might be, and who a prohibited person is in the bill and at risk person under this particular bill is defined as any person who has made statements or exhibited behavior that indicates to a reasonable person that there is a likelihood that that person is at risk of attempting suicide or causing physical harm to oneself or others. A lawfully authorized user is defined under this new bill as any person who is not in unlawful possession of a firearm is not prohibited from possessing a firearm under state or federal law and has expressed permission to possess and use the firearm. A prohibited person is anyone who is not a lawfully authorized user. Some little clever lawyer lawyer trickery there in the drafting a locked container is what the ordinance will require, so it doesn't specifically define what the storage device should be, but does provide the Chief of police the opportunity to do some rulemaking to be able to provide specifications of approved storage devices under this ordinance. A minor is defined as anybody who is under the age of 18, consistent with state law, and a prohibited person means any person who is not a lawfully authorized user. So essentially, this bill would impose civil penalties on individuals who who failed to store their firearms appropriately. And if there is a consequence, as defined by the bill as a result of not using Safe Storage Practices Council Bill 119267, this is the legislation related to stolen firearms. This would create an increased civil fine for those folks who violate this particular law. It's very it's an existing law at the city of Seattle, and it just simply increases the civil fine from $500 to an amount not to exceed $1,000. Both of the enforcement mechanisms for both of these laws is a civil fine. It's an it's an infraction citation that comes with a civil fine and penalty. There are no criminal consequences as a result of violating these council bills, obviously, if there is. Injury caused to someone that would be subject to an end to our ordinary criminal laws, either under state or city laws. But but. But it is not a crime to violate either one of these. Council bills. These are these are civil infractions only. So I'm happy to take powers and take questions if anybody has any and if not. Any questions or comments on this legislation. Kasper, back to you. Councilmember Gosar, thank you so much for leading the charge on this. So appreciate what you and the mayor have done. And I want to acknowledge our moms demand action. So many of you have been here and been working with us, I think, since Sandy Hook and maybe before. But unbelievably enough, it's been five and a half years since that horrible event brought such attention to our entire nation. But I think particularly here in the city of Seattle, we grouped together in ways that we hadn't before. And I want to acknowledge our prosecuting attorney, Dan Satter Berg, also our city attorney, Pete Holmes, and Chris Anderson on his team. And it mattered so much that you and your voices were out there saying, enough, this is just so impossible that we are putting up with this kind of thing that's happening across our nation. I also want to acknowledge Dr. Fred Rivera. I don't know if Dr. Rivera's here today, but he was really helping us identify what we could be doing at Harborview Hospital Medical Center to use the money that we can to help do database research. And this work that you, Councilmember Gonzales, have done really is evidence based looking for that kind of solution. So I want to acknowledge all of you who've been involved there, balancing rights and responsibilities, and also our Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility. That organization has been around since the Sandy Hook event happened and much is happening across our state. I want to say thank you to all and how important this is to our city. And good for the comments or questions. I would like to say it just a few words for Councilman Gonzales, sort of close, and that is, you know, there are federal laws, state laws and local municipal laws in terms of gun safety and gun regulations. And it's a complicated world, but at the end of the day, we are doing everything possible here on a local basis that we can, given the hand we're dealt and the existing legal scheme. For me, it's very simple. We're just trying to save one life at a time when life at a time and whether this law or any laws drastically change the needs. That concerns me unless we're trying to save one life at a time. So thank you for your your advocacy for the families who've been affected by gun violence, that they understand this very well. So, Councilman Gonzales, I can't thank you enough for bringing forward this legislation and for being such a strong advocate for just reasonableness and common sense laws. And so I look forward to supporting this. And with that, you can close debate. Thank you so much. So it's my pleasure to bring these two bills for consideration by the full council. And I think that these are a suite of laws, particularly the safe storage law, that really is going to have a measurable impact in keeping our children safe and our communities safe from from gun violence and all of the research that we have been reading and hearing about and and hear and just sort of really digesting in this space really does tell us that safe storage of firearms in the home makes a huge impact in terms of keeping our communities safe. And I just wanted to highlight some of that research and some of those findings and so that we have a clear understanding of why it is we believe that this is a public health solution to a public safety crisis that is occurring within all of our communities across the country, including here in in Seattle. So according to a study conducted by the University of Washington School of Public Health, 63% of firearm owning households in Washington State do not store their firearms locked and unloaded. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, and almost half of suicide deaths involve a firearm in Washington State. In 2016, firearms were the leading method of suicide for men and the second leading method for women. According to a Spokesman-Review analysis of state death records, 4164 people in Washington ended their lives with a firearm between 2010 and 2017. That accounts for almost half of all suicides and 78% of gun deaths. A study conducted at the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center found that safe storage of guns decrease the risk of accidental firearm injuries and suicides to youth by 73%. This study examined 108 cases where a child or adolescent younger than 20 years gained access to a firearm and shot himself or herself, intentionally or unintentionally, or shot another individual unintentionally. The Harborview study shows that the presence of a household firearm is associated with an increased risk of suicide among young adults and adolescents. In a related study of suicide attempts and COMPLETERS, investigators found that 75% of the guns were stored in the residence of the victim, friend or relative. Available evidence is compiled by the RAND Corporation indicates that child access prevention laws and safe storage laws reduce self-inflicted, fatal or non-fatal firearm injuries among youth and reduce unintentional firearm injuries or unintentional firearm deaths among children. The study also indicates that limiting access to individuals with mental illness appears to reduce the rates of gun violence. A Secret Service study of school shooters showed that access to guns was common to many attackers. Over two thirds of the attackers acquired the gun or guns used in their attacks from their own home or that of a relative. Stolen guns can be used to commit subsequent crimes. And the Bureau of Justice Statistics has reported that at least 232,000 guns were stolen per year from 2005 through 2010. And the U.S. Department of the Treasury study revealed that nearly a quarter of ATF gun trafficking investigations involve stolen firearms and that 10% of the investigations involve guns stolen from residences. As estimated 150,000, an estimated 150,000 adults in King County reported keeping a firearm unlocked in their homes and loaded in 2015. In 2017, the Seattle Police Department reported taken into custody 3213 guns and has indicated that 250 guns were reported stolen in the same year. So we have a lot of work to do in this area to continue to keep our kids safe and our broader community safe. And I'm really just thrilled about being able to have had the opportunity to work with Mayor Durkan on this package of laws to encourage this as a as a practice. And I also want to thank our city attorney, Pete Holmes, who provided us with a lot of legal expertize in terms of threading the needle between what we can do as a city and what we cannot do as a city based on state preemption laws. And we believe that we are on good legal standing here and good footing here to defend this law should it invoke a lawsuit based on preemption. And largely that is because we are not restricting how people on their person possess firearms, but what they must do in order to store firearms when those firearms are not in their possession. And we believe that this is a balanced, reasonable approach that addresses any potential preemption arguments at the state level. And I'm really grateful for the city attorney's advice on that and for Assistant City Attorney Carlton Su's advice on that. I also want to thank Robert Feldstein, who's in the audience here with the mayor's office, who keeps trying to, I think, go to his other job. But we needed to get this done first. So I really appreciate your ongoing commitment to helping us do this work. I know you've been an advocate and a policy wonk in this area for a really long time. So appreciated all of your expertize. I also wanted to thank Greg Doss way in the back, who has given me more words than I can ever imagine being able to repeat and sound as smart as I do. So thank you for allowing me to plagiarize all of your work, Greg, as we make the case for why these laws are sensible and lawful. And then I also wanted to thank Brianna Thomas, formerly of my office, now with the Office of Inspector General and Public Safety, who really did a lot of the heavy lifting in my office in terms of the policy work. She did tremendous job making sure that this bill reflected the equity concerns that I brought by making sure that we didn't have any criminal infractions and civil infractions and also making sure that we have a education first component on this law to make sure that folks were able to understand their new responsibilities under this new rubric. And then lastly, wanted to thank Moms Demand Action, folks from the Brady Campaign and folks from the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, all whom joined us at the table in my committee on June 13th to provide us their perspective and sort of real life stories about how gun violence impacts them personally and our communities in general. And I've just really appreciated your all's commitment to continuing to show up and to continue to fight the good fight to keep us all all safe. So with that being said, I think I have covered all of. The points. And well done. Well done. Any further comments before we vote? So we're going to vote on these separately. So please call the role on the passage of Council. Bill 119266. O'Brien by Sergeant Bagshaw. Gonzales, I for Bob Johnson, Juarez must gather by President Harrell High Line in favor and unopposed. Bill passed and show Senate. Please call the roll on council. Bill 119267. O'BRIEN All right. Sergeant Bagshaw. Gonzalez I. Herbold Johnson. Juarez. Mosqueda. I President Harrell. I 9 a.m. favorite unopposed. The bill passed and the chair sign. And thank you again, Katherine Gonzales. Please call the next agenda item from the Select Committee on the 2018 Seattle City Strategic Plan.