King County Council Passes Councilmember Girmay Zahilay's $1M Proposal for New Gun Violence Prevention Strategy

by Lauryn Bray

On July 16, King County Council voted to pass Councilmember Girmay Zahilay's proposal to allocate $1 million from the upcoming $178 million supplemental budget for a comprehensive gun violence prevention strategy.

"There wasn't a specific shooting that brought this on," Zahilay told the Emerald. "Rather, this proposal was precipitated by the staggering number of youth shootings we've seen in recent years, and especially this year. King County has seen more children and teenage victims of gun violence this year so far than in all of 2023."

Gun violence in King County has been steadily increasing each year since 2018. In 2023, there were over 1,701 shots-fired incidents, and King County is already on track to overtake that number this year. By the end of the first quarter of 2023, there were 357 shots-fired incidents. In 2024, King County saw 407 shots-fired incidents by the end of the first quarter.

"We work regularly with families of gun violence victims, and they need things like rental assistance, mental-health resources, therapy, transportation, [virtual] jobs that let them stay at home with their kids, civil legal aids to help them get lawyers to navigate the criminal justice system — everything that you can think of, they need," said Zahilay.

The new legislation will create a database for victims, families, and communities impacted by gun violence that contains resources available directly from King County and through partnerships with community organizations.

"One of the five parts to my plan is creating a resource database and an employment plan, and the problem it's trying to solve is how scattered and inaccessible resources tend to be when it comes to supporting victims and their families," said Zahilay. "I just left Harborview Medical Center, where they have social workers who are responsible for providing resources to victims and their surviving families, and what they described [was] a situation where they have to go to 100 different websites and make 100 different calls to piece together the resources that are needed to take care of somebody."

The plan also requires the King County Executive to work with partners in the criminal justice system, Harborview Medical Center, impacted people, and community-based organizations to create a plan for identifying individuals at highest risk of being involved in gun violence, and then create tailored intervention plans.

"I want us to be targeted," said Zahilay. "I think there are a lot of gun violence prevention efforts out there that focus on the general public — they put up barriers for the general public to access guns [with] more background checks [and by] banning assault weapons, [and] holding manufacturers of guns accountable. Those things are really important long-term strategies, but I think we also need a focus on the people who are most at risk of shooting or being shot."

Zahilay said, "We know, based on the data, that a tiny sliver of the population is responsible for a huge proportion of gun violence, and I want us to ask ourselves, 'Who are those handful of people who are committing the most violence?' and then target our resources and our intervention efforts on that specific population."

Co-sponsored by Councilmember Jorge Barn, Zahilay's legislation requires the County Executive to implement a gun violence prevention program by September that would include the following five core strategies:

• Create a Regional Board for Gun Violence Prevention to encourage and facilitate collaboration and communication between several levels of government, first responders, and impacted communities to promptly and effectively respond to and prevent gun violence incidents.
• Develop and implement a standardized protocol for King County departments to follow in the aftermath of gun violence.
• Create a resource database for victims, families, and communities impacted by gun violence, including resources available directly from King County (such as mental health resources) and through partnerships with community organizations.
• Advance targeted interventions by creating a plan for how the Executive will collaborate with partners in the criminal justice system, Harborview Medical Center, impacted people, and community-based organizations to identify individuals at high risk of being involved in gun violence
• Conduct a comprehensive analysis of existing and possible revenue sources to fund the gun violence prevention plan, including reviewing a potential councilmanic tax to support Harborview Medical Center, the Crisis Care Centers Levy, the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy, the Best Starts for Kids Levy, the Mental Illness Drug Dependency sales tax, the general fund, philanthropy, and more.

"As both a councilmember and a county resident, there is no priority more urgent and critical to me than keeping everyone in our community safe, especially our young people," Barn said in a press release. "I am proud to co-sponsor this proposal, which will help build better systems to address and respond to gun violence for today and tomorrow. However, this proposal by itself will not solve the gun-violence crisis: we must continue to enhance our region's mental health and social support systems, and push for action at all levels of government to address this crisis and keep our communities safe."

Featured Image: King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay announcing the Regional Peace Keepers Collective in 2021. (Photo: Alex Garland)