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Another Tragedy in Skagit County

September 3rd, 2008, blog post by kmcomer

Yesterday in the small town of Alger six more lives were lost.  Two others will live to tell their stories.  And families and a community will be forever changed.  I wish it were an unfamiliar story.

Mass shootings are occurring with an increasing, and disturbing frequency.  The Capitol Hill Shooting in spring of 2006, the Jewish Federation shooting in the summer of 2006, a family killed in south King County in December of 2007, a mother, child and two additional children shot in Clarkston in January.  And yesterday, 6 killed and 8 wounded.  Not to mention the many incidents we see in communities across the state each week.  And they will keep occurring if we continue to allow firearms to flow readily and easily to individuals who are a danger to themselves and our communities. 

Here are some facts:

  • 91% of all mental health commitment records are not recorded in the national firearms database .  Here in Washington State, no records are submitted – if they are submitted at all – until an individual has been involuntarily committed for a period of 90 days.  A process that is out of sync with federal law which states that such a record should be flagged as soon as a person is adjudicated mentally ill, which in Washington State occurs when the person is committed for 14 days.
  • When comparing rates of firearm mortality across the country, the states with the lowest rates of firearm violence are those states with the strongest firearms laws in the country.   The five states with the lowest rates of firearm violence are:  Massachusetts, Hawaii, Rhode Island, New York, and Connecticut. The converse is true as well. The five states with some of the weakest firearms laws have some of the weakest laws in the country.  Those five states are: Louisiana, Alaska, Nevada, Mississippi, and Arizona.
  • A recent study published in the American Journal of preventative medicine found that strong background check systems were “associated with a 27 percent lower firearm suicide rate and a 22 percent lower homicide rate among adults 21 and older, the legal age to purchase a gun” as well as reduced firearm violence.

Firearm violence is preventable – not inevitable.  We can do more to protect our communities by strengthening our background check systems.

Let’s hope we do so before the next tragedy occurs.