Title
AN ORDINANCE relating to the secure storage of firearms; adding a new chapter to K.C.C. Title 12 and prescribing penalties.
Body
STATEMENT OF FACTS:
1. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research, also known as WONDER, in the United States, thirty-six thousand two hundred forty-seven people died in 2015 as a result of firearms. That is just fewer than the thirty-eight thousand eight hundred eighteen death resulting from motor vehicle incidents. Of those firearm deaths, sixty-one percent were suicides and thirty-six percent were homicides.
2. The Washington state Department of Health data show that in 2015, firearms were the third leading cause of injury-related death in Washington state, killing approximately seven hundred fourteen Washington residents. Of these firearm deaths, seventy-five percent were suicides and firearm suicides accounted for forty-seven percent of all suicides in Washington state in 2015. During the same period, one hundred forty-six King County residents died from a firearm injury, including six youth age seventeen and younger.
3. According to the 2015 Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs Annual Report, sixty-two percent of homicides in Washington state were committed with firearms.
4. The Washington state Department of Health data also indicate that thirty-nine youth, age seventeen and younger, died as a result of firearms in 2015. That is the equivalent of a child or teen being killed by gunfire every nine days. An additional thirty children were hospitalized. In King County, six youth died as a result of firearms in 2015 and nine other youth were hospitalized in King County during that period.
5. The Washington state Department of Health data show that in 2015 twenty-eight homicides occurred among youth, age seventeen and younger and of those, seventeen, which is sixty-one percent, died as a result of firearm homicides.
6. Between 20...
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