Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson (D) is pushing a new round of gun control measures, including a ban on concealed carry in designated “sensitive places” across the city.
According to KOMO News, Wilson wants to work with state legislators on several fronts: regulating firearms “in sensitive spaces,” restricting firearms at Seattle Center, and updating juvenile firearm possession and sentencing laws.
The push follows two violent incidents in Seattle this year. Three people were killed in a shootout at the Bite of Seattle food festival on July 26, 2026. Just under two weeks before Wilson’s announcement, six people were shot over a 24-hour stretch in the city, three of them fatally.
Wilson’s answer is to strip law-abiding permit holders of their ability to carry in certain zones of the city. But the record from other cities that have already tried this raises hard questions about whether it does anything to stop violent crime.
New York’s Experience
New York City established a “sensitive place” gun-free zone in Times Square, and shootings there have continued regardless. Three people were wounded when a suspect opened fire in the gun-free zone around 11:50 p.m. on July 13, 2023. Three more people were shot in the same gun-free zone on August 9, 2025. And on August 31, 2026, a bank executive and another citizen were stabbed in Times Square; the bank executive died of her wounds.
Those attacks happened in a zone where legal concealed carry was already prohibited. The people who wanted to commit violence there were unaffected by the ban. The people stripped of the ability to defend themselves were the ordinary citizens walking through.
Seattle’s proposal follows the same model: disarm the people who follow the law, and leave everyone else to hope the policy works out differently this time.
