Latest tragedy in Seattle a sad reminder: Guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people

Anoth­er late spring day has come and gone, and with it, the lives of more inno­cent Wash­ing­to­ni­ans have been blot­ted out, cru­el­ly cut short by gunfire:

A man who killed four peo­ple in a bloody shoot­ing spree at two Seat­tle loca­tions end­ed an intense man­hunt by turn­ing the gun on him­self as offi­cers closed in on him Wednesday.

The Seat­tle Police Depart­ment iden­ti­fied the man as Ian Stawicki.

Har­borview Med­ical Cen­ter said he died Wednes­day night, as did anoth­er vic­tim, bring­ing the total death toll to six. The lone sur­viv­ing vic­tim was list­ed in crit­i­cal but sta­ble condition.

The day’s first shoot­ing occurred around 11 a.m. at Café Rac­er in North Seat­tle, where police arrived to find five peo­ple down inside the busi­ness.  Three died from their wounds.

Less than an hour lat­er, a man pulled out a hand­gun and fatal­ly shot a woman in the head dur­ing a car­jack­ing at Eighth and Seneca.

Though Seat­tle police were ini­tial­ly not sure that the two acts of vio­lence were con­nect­ed, they were lat­er able to deter­mine that all of the shoot­ings were per­pe­trat­ed by the same indi­vid­ual, Ian Staw­ic­ki, who, as report­ed above, turned his own gun on him­self after he was cor­nered by SPD in West Seattle.

The names of the oth­er peo­ple Staw­ic­ki killed have not yet been released. They are sad­ly just the lat­est vic­tims in a spate of gun vio­lence that has shak­en Seat­tle and caused con­cern in near­by com­mu­ni­ties. To recap:

• In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of May 27th, sev­er­al homes were dam­aged in a series of dri­ve by shoot­ings. Four homes and vehi­cles parked in front were tar­get­ed by unknown assailants: one on South Fron­tenac Street, one on South Hold­en Street, one on Columbian Dri­ve South, one on South Hen­der­son Street . No one was injured, but there were some close calls, as the homes were occu­pied at the time of the dri­ve-by attacks.
• Mean­while, the same night, anoth­er Seat­tle home­own­er was shot after he con­front­ed a sus­pect who had bro­ken into his home. He was trans­port­ed to a hos­pi­tal with life threat­en­ing injuries.
• On May 26th, as the Folk­life fes­ti­val was going on, Ryan Burr was shot in the leg while wait­ing to cross Broad Street near the Space Nee­dle when a mem­ber of a street gang pulled a gun on anoth­er man who he thought had insult­ed him. Burr was tak­en to Har­borview Med­ical Cen­ter and lat­er released. The shoot­er was appre­hend­ed by Seat­tle police inside the Cen­ter House and booked into the King Coun­ty Jail on inves­ti­ga­tion of assault.
• On May 24th, forty-three year old father of two Justin Fer­rari was killed by gun­fire that tore through his vehi­cle as it was mov­ing through the inter­sec­tion of Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Way and East Cher­ry Street in the Cen­tral Dis­trict. He died at the scene in his father’s arms. Police are still look­ing for the killer; no arrests have been made yet.
• On April 22nd, twen­ty-one year old culi­nary stu­dent Nicole West­brook was shot and killed in Pio­neer Square while walk­ing home with her boyfriend. She had just moved to Seat­tle, accord­ing to news reports.

And then, of course, we have today’s deplorable shoot­ings, all appar­ent­ly per­pe­trat­ed by Ian Staw­ic­ki, which result­ed in the deaths of half a dozen peo­ple — inlud­ing Staw­ic­ki. Staw­ick­i’s broth­er Andrew (who shares the same last name), told The Seat­tle Times his broth­er was men­tal­ly ill and stub­born.

“It’s no sur­prise to me this hap­pened,” he told the news­pa­per. “We could see this com­ing. Noth­ing good is going to come with that much anger inside of you.”

Sad­ly, it is all too easy for a per­son with a men­tal ill­ness to get his or hands on a gun in the Unit­ed States, due to loop­hole-filled laws and lax reg­u­la­tions which the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion (NRA) is con­stant­ly work­ing to weaken.

A coali­tion of sev­er­al hun­dred may­ors from around the coun­try known as May­ors Against Ille­gal Guns (cofound­ed by Michael Bloomberg and Thomas Meni­no) has been work­ing to close such loop­holes but has had to con­tend with the oppo­si­tion of the gun lob­by at every turn. The coali­tion points out that since 1968, when Mar­tin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assas­si­nat­ed, more than four hun­dred thou­sand Amer­i­cans have been killed with guns. More than four hun­dred thou­sand. To put that num­ber in per­spec­tive, that’s equiv­a­lent to two-thirds of the cur­rent pop­u­la­tion of Seat­tle. And more peo­ple are killed with guns —  espe­cial­ly ille­gal­ly obtained guns — every sin­gle day.

When is enough enough? When are we going to take action — as a region, as a coun­try, as a soci­ety — to keep firearms out of the hands of peo­ple who can­not be trust­ed to store and use them safe­ly and responsibly?

Diehard defend­ers of the Sec­ond Amend­ment would have us believe we’d all be safer if we were armed to the teeth, so we could bet­ter defend our homes and our prop­er­ty. They are utter­ly wrong. The more guns we col­lec­tive­ly buy, the more guns we will col­lec­tive­ly use. Data has borne this out.

The recent out­break of gun vio­lence will become even more trag­ic if it results in more gun sales. As Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al writer Lance Dick­ie says:

Seat­tle is suf­fer­ing a fright­en­ing con­ta­gion of mind­less armed vio­lence. Idiots with guns claim­ing lives and wound­ing oth­ers with stray rounds. Vio­lence amped up to a delu­sion­al defense of hon­or and pride with mur­der­ous con­se­quences for inno­cent people.

This urban tragedy is all the more dis­turb­ing because of the poten­tial for the dement­ed response it will inspire. Oth­er idiots with guns will feel empow­ered to arm them­selves and argue their right to pro­tect the pub­lic. Please spare us the cheesy excuse to car­ry a piece into a din­er or gro­cery store. An anx­ious city is not com­fort­ed by the prospect of hero wannabes itch­ing to shoot back at — whatever.

What can be done to pre­vent future tragedies like the one our region expe­ri­enced today from hap­pen­ing again? That’s not a ques­tion that is eas­i­ly answered. There is no panacea. As Dan­ny West­neat laments:

We are a city on edge. A city now in full-fledged crisis.

The may­or, the police and the feds need to quit bick­er­ing, sit down like adults — now — and hash out what, if any­thing, they can do. Because the peo­ple, at this point, are lit­er­al­ly being caught in the crossfire.

At the least there needs to be far more urgency and more police pres­ence in the neigh­bor­hoods, until what the may­or called this “wave of gun vio­lence” is brought under con­trol. Or, more like­ly, ebbs on its own.

The Stranger’s Jonathan Golob, mean­while, argues that days like today are the price we pay for gut­ting pub­lic ser­vices. A strong social safe­ty net can deter crime, pover­ty, poor health, and many oth­er problems.

But instead of strength­en­ing our safe­ty net, we’ve been rip­ping holes in it, year after year. We’ve sim­ply got to stop doing that.

As the title of this post says, guns don’t kill peo­ple. Peo­ple with guns — peo­ple with guns who should­n’t have guns — kill people.

If Ian Staw­ic­ki had received treat­ment for his men­tal ill­ness, if he’d had more peo­ple look­ing after him, if he had­n’t had access to a firearm… he and his vic­tims would still be alive right now. Today’s tragedy would not have occurred.

Let’s take action to pre­vent the tragedies of tomor­row by work­ing togeth­er to end sense­less gun vio­lence, espe­cial­ly at the state level.