If Seattle really wants to decrease gun violence, it needs to focus on disparities like mental health, homelessness, education, drug abuse, access to weapons and crime — not paper signs in store windows.
On Aug. 19, Mayor McGinn and the group Washington CeaseFire unveiled a plan for gun-free businesses in Seattle. The voluntary gun ban asks customers to leave their weapons at home. Fifty-seven businesses have already signed up (as of press time) to post a sign to declare their business a gun-free zone. (The ban excludes law-enforcement officers and people with a concealed-weapons permit, of which there are more than 350,000 in Washington state).
In theory, the idea makes sense: Ask people to not bring guns into a business and there won’t be any violence.
Business owners do have the right to create rules about who enters their business. But as it stands, gun owners have rights to own and carry guns (with the proper permits) in Washington state.
We Seattleites can’t be that naive. The ban will only be directed toward people who don’t have the proper permits to carry a gun in the first place. It seems unlikely that a sign in a window will cause them to suddenly follow the law.
Just weeks ago, Martin Duckworth, a homeless man who frequented Pioneer Square, shot Seattle bus driver DeLoy Dupuis after a dispute over bus fare. Seattle Police still do not know how Duckworth got the gun.
The one real impact the plan may actually have is backlash from customers. Café Racer — the University District cafe where a patron shot and killed four people in May 2012 — was already facing serious resistance. A Reddit post on the Seattle subReddit said the coffee shop was being inundated with angry calls and e-mails from customers for its participation in the campaign.
And even Washington CeaseFire director Ralph Faciatelli admits it’s too utopian. “We know this won’t stop someone determined to cause violence,” he said in a Puget Sound Business Journal article.
We all want to live in a safer Seattle, and it’s commendable to take a stand against gun violence. Feeling like we need to look over our shoulders for the next instance of gun violence certainly doesn’t make us feel any safer. But some posters on a window likely won’t do anything, other than anger some gun owners.
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