SEATTLE — The Seattle City Council’s Public Safety Committee voted Tuesday to advance a new gun violence reduction strategy, two days after three people were killed in three separate shootings across the Belltown neighborhood.
The resolution, sponsored by Councilmember Maritza Rivera, passed 3-0 with Councilmember Eddie Lin abstaining. It calls for a two-year, $418,000 partnership with the National Network for Safe Communities, a group Rivera said has helped cities including Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia reduce gun violence by up to 60%.
Uh-oh. What is this strategy?
Vice Chair Rob Saka urged Wilson to include funding for the partnership in her upcoming budget proposal.
“The very definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results,” Saka said. “We need to try something different here when it comes to gun violence.”
The resolution is nonbinding but signals the council’s intent to pursue the focused deterrence model, which targets the small number of individuals responsible for the majority of shootings in a given city.
I have long said that if it were merely the presence of guns, the most dangerous places in California would be the gun room at the Autrey museum in Los Angeles, and the Winchester museum in San Jose next to the Winchester Mystery House. If those places are dismissed by the Hoplophobes, to use a term coined by Colonel Jeff Cooper about thirty years ago, because there are hardly any people in those places, then the most dangerous places would be the police squad rooms just before each shift goes out on patrol, or every target range in the state, particularly when the range is hosting a competition.
ReplyDeleteAny of those scenarios are completely absurd.
It is, after all, the demonstratively depraved mind that controls the hand that controls the gun causing all the trouble, bloodshed and death.
ReplyDeleteWhile all have sinned and fallen short of God's plan, persons with the level of depravity that result in a Chicago weekend sized body count are still few enough to focus on and remove from the general population long enough to make a difference in safety for the human beings.