As of early December, the King County Prosecutor’s office reported that gun violence resulted in 73 homicides and an additional 283 injuries in the county. Unfortunately, gun violence continued through the final hours of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, as four separate shootings left four people injured.

Sadly, the experience of Seattle and King County is not uncommon. An analysis of gun violence by CNN reveals that two-thirds of the nation’s 40 large cities have seen an increase in homicides and gun violence over the past year. By early December, 9 of the 40 cities had already set new records for homicides and gun violence in a single year. Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, cited three primary factors for the increased violence:

• The impact of Covid-19 on communities and their first responders,
• Social unrest after the murder of George Floyd, and

The surge in gun sales since the Covid pandemic began.