Title
A MOTION establishing a firearm safety task force to develop strategies to reduce the impact of firearm injury and death in King County through the identification and implementation of intervention strategies based on proven public health methodologies; and requiring a report and implementation plan.
Body
WHEREAS, in 2018, through July 16, 2018, there have been thirty-one-thousand five-hundred sixty-one incidents of gun violence nationally, including seven-thousand eight-hundred eighty-five firearms related deaths in the United States, which averages to about forty gun related deaths per day, and
WHEREAS, since January 2013, there have been twenty-five mass shootings that have occurred in Washington state, that have resulted in forty-seven persons being killed and seventy-one being wounded, and
WHEREAS, gun violence, and threats of gun violence, whether from intentional or accidental use, undermines the sense of security that all persons should have in their communities, and
WHEREAS, the most-recent available Washington state Department of Health data show that firearms are the third-leading cause of injury-related death in Washington state, killing approximately six-hundred twenty-five Washington residents each year between 2009 to 2013, and firearms were involved in one in six of all deaths among youth ages fifteen to twenty-four, and
WHEREAS, according to the Washington state Department of Health, in 2015 in King County there were five-hundred thirty-five suicide deaths and one-hundred sixty homicides caused by firearms, and one hundred forty-six residents died from a gun injury, and
WHEREAS, in King County, more people die from firearms than car crashes, making firearm injury one of the leading preventable causes of death, and
WHEREAS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2015 firearm fatalities cost almost two hundred million dollars in medical costs and lost productivity in King County, and
WHEREAS, according to va...

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