Seattle’s mayor has announced yet another plan to reduce gun violence, and once again taxpayers are being told that more programs, more government coordination, more spending and more restrictions on lawful gun ownership are the answer. The problem is that Seattle has been traveling down this road for decades.
Self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Mayor Katie Wilson’s newly announced strategy comes after the deadly July shooting at the Bite of Seattle event. As Cam pointed out earlier this week, the plan would combine law enforcement, emergency response, community intervention programs, youth services and public-health initiatives while transferring more than $5 million annually in violence-intervention contracts to the city’s CARE Department. It would also add new government positions, spend more than $600,000 on an after-school program, expand mental-health services, establish new research partnerships and pursue additional firearm restrictions. It sounds impressive on paper, but Seattle doesn’t have a shortage of programs; it has a shortage of evidence that the money it has already spent is producing the promised results.
According to Seattle’s own City Council, between 2020 and 2024, shots fired increased 71 percent, nonfatal shootings increased 58 percent, and fatal shootings increased 23 percent. Those numbers are particularly important because Seattle has hardly spent the last decade doing nothing about gun violence. The city and Washington state have repeatedly embraced gun-control measures and violence-prevention initiatives while insisting that additional intervention would make communities safer, yet violence has increased. Now the proposed solution is another round of government intervention.
Even Seattle’s own auditor has raised concerns about the city’s approach. A 2025 audit was specifically undertaken to determine whether city-funded interventions were aligned with Seattle’s gun-violence problem. The auditor noted that gun violence had increased significantly over the previous decade and called for systematic reporting, better analysis and a more coordinated approach to determining whether Seattle’s efforts were effective. That should raise an obvious question: why are taxpayers being asked to fund additional programs when the city has spent years without adequately demonstrating the effectiveness of the programs it already funds? This isn’t merely a Seattle problem.
A major National Research Council review of firearms and violence examined the research surrounding more than 80 gun-violence prevention programs. Its conclusion was striking. There was “almost no empirical evidence” that those programs affected children’s behavior, knowledge, attitudes or beliefs regarding firearms. Researchers also found little scientific basis for determining how various prevention programs affected firearm injuries. Additional reviews of the enormous amounts of data repeatedly highlighted that finding while challenging claims that commonly proposed gun-control policies have been conclusively demonstrated to reduce violent crime. Studies also call into question whether gun-free zones and other restrictions on lawful concealed carry make public spaces safer. As we already know, THEY DO NOT.
Despite both the data and common sense, biased researchers and gun-control organizations cite other studies supporting various firearm regulations. But that disagreement itself exposes the problem with politicians describing their preferred policies as unquestionably “evidence based.” The research literature is far more contested than that phrase suggests. Seattle is now considering additional restrictions in certain public spaces, reviewing juvenile firearm-possession laws and evaluating firearm regulations at Seattle Center.
But criminals, by definition, do not base their behavior on whether carrying a firearm in a particular location is permitted. The person who intends to commit murder is already willing to violate the law against murder. Expecting another prohibited-place designation to suddenly change that person’s behavior deserves far more scrutiny than it typically receives. Meanwhile, the people most affected by those restrictions may be the people who were obeying the law in the first place.
There is also the matter of money. Seattle is facing a projected $175 million budget deficit next year. Councilmember Bob Kettle has warned that even the city’s current financial structure is “inherently unsustainable” and that larger deficits are projected beyond 2027. That makes this an especially strange time to respond to years of questionable results by expanding government programs. Moving $5 million in contracts from one department to another doesn’t prove those contracts prevent shootings. Creating a director of gun-violence reduction doesn’t reduce gun violence. Hiring coordinators doesn’t stop criminals. Creating another council to review homicides after people are already dead isn’t the same thing as preventing those homicides. Attaching the words “community,” “public health” or “evidence based” to a program does not magically make it effective.
Seattle officials should be required to answer some very basic questions before spending another dollar. Which existing programs have measurably reduced shootings? What specific benchmarks were established when those programs received funding? The answers are simple; NONE of the programs work. So why are taxpayers continuing to fund them? I point out that with every enacted policy, program or “common sense” approach taken by Democrat-run states and cities; both those creating and supporting the actions are never willing to admit ineffectiveness. In typical government fashion, if something doesn’t work, just add more to it; be it spending, propaganda, and as is often the case, LIES.
There is one portion of Seattle’s proposal worth distinguishing from the broader collection of programs: focused deterrence. Unlike sweeping restrictions directed at the general population, focused deterrence attempts to identify the relatively small number of individuals and groups responsible for a disproportionate amount of serious violence and concentrate law-enforcement attention and intervention resources on them. That approach at least begins with an uncomfortable reality that politicians too often avoid… violent crime is not evenly distributed throughout the population. If Seattle knows that a relatively small number of people are responsible for a large share of shootings, then concentrate resources on those people.
Arrest violent offenders. Prosecute criminals who illegally possess firearms. Target repeat offenders and violent groups. Identify individuals driving shootings and intervene before the next body hits the pavement. Stop pretending that another restriction imposed on someone who already follows the law is the same thing as confronting the person committing the violence.Seattle’s residents deserve more than another press conference announcing another “comprehensive” plan.They deserve accountability.
When shootings rise while government programs multiply, the answer cannot perpetually be another program, another study, another restriction and another check written by taxpayers. At some point, government must prove that what it is doing works. After years of spending, regulation and promises, Seattle should have been able to do that long before asking taxpayers to pay for the next round.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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