Democrat lawmakers in the state of Washington have imposed all kinds of burdens on lawful gun owners. Selling a "large capacity" magazine or a so-called assault weapon is illegal in the state, as is transferring a firearm without putting the recipient through a background check. Gun buyers must also deal with a 10-business-day waiting period, and starting next May they'll also have to get a state-issued permit-to-purchase before shopping.
Possession of a concealed firearm without a license can land you in jail for up to a year on a first offense, and it's also illegal to carry a loaded handgun in a vehicle unless you possess a valid Concealed Pistol License. But while adult residents in the state can and do face serious consequences for violating these laws, juveniles are a different story.
Since 2018, youth under 18 who are found in possession of a gun essentially get five strikes before serious penalties apply. They would have to be caught with a gun and charged five times before a judge could issue a detention of longer than a month. The first four charges might get a kid detention up to 30 days, community service, a fine, or nothing at all.
By contrast, adults arrested for illegal gun possession can expect harsher penalties, like years in prison or thousands of dollars in fines.
That is absolutely insane, though to be fair, the same can be said of the state's entire gun control regime. But why are juvenile offenders getting five passes before they can be held for even 31 days? We're told all the time that juvenile crime is a serious concern, but some researches say the punishment for teens is worse than the crime itself.
Across the country, juvenile justice advocates say lighter sentencing for people under 18 protects kids from worse outcomes later in life.
“We really need to take seriously gun possession in this country, but the idea that we can solve this problem by coming down hard on youth is a misguided approach,” said Josh Rovner, a senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project, a juvenile justice advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
Define "hard." Democrat State Rep. David Hackney introduced a bill last year that would have applied a "three strikes" approach before a judge could sentence a teen to more than month in juvenile detention for illegally possessing a gun. I'd say that's hardly a harsh punishment, but Hackney's bill couldn't even get a committee hearing.
Hackney told KUOW that many of his fellow Democrats "call juvenile justice reform basically making it harder and harder to incarcerate juveniles," arguing that it traumatizes them without acknowledging the fact that "violent crime traumatize[s] the community.”
I doubt Hackney and I have much in common politically, but I agree that it's absurd to be more concerned about the effect incarceration might have on juvenile offenders than the effect that juvenile offenders might have on the community as a whole.
The recent shooting at the Bite of Seattle festival has reinvigorated the debate over the state's lenient treatment of juvenile gun offenders. One of the three people killed in the shooting was 9-year-old Junior Cee Niko Semo, who had at least one juvenile conviction for illegally possessing a gun. A 15-year-old has also been arrested and charged in the shooting, and police believe there's at least one more suspect out there who has yet to be arrested or publicly identified.
King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion said she feels Washington’s current law is too lenient, but she wants to meet advocates halfway.
“I am not trying to incarcerate more youth. I'm not trying to increase the number of juveniles entering the system,” Manion said. “But I do think that waiting until the fifth adjudication or the fifth conviction of a young person carrying a firearm, it sends maybe the unintended message to young people that carrying a firearm is not a big deal.”
Maybe? Oh, I'd say most definitely. And while that message is certainly unintended (these same Democrats don't want adults carrying firearms either, legally or not), the politicians who've put this policy in place are smart enough to know by now that this is the message that's being delivered when teens are repeatedly caught with guns and are let go with a slap on the wrist.
