Washington lawmakers are scrutinizing the state’s juvenile gun possession law in the wake of the fatal shooting at the Bite of Seattle food festival in late July.
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.
Some lawmakers and officials are pushing to change the rules for youth found with guns after the recent shootout at Seattle Center that left three dead and five injured. One of the teens involved, 19-year-old Junior Cee Niko Semo, who died at the scene, had previously been convicted at least once of illegally possessing a gun.That case, from 2024, was dismissed by a judge last year. A 15-year-old was arrested and charged in the shooting.
State Rep. David Hackney, a Democrat from Renton, wants to lower the threshold at which harsher penalties kick in for young people caught with guns. He said longer detention periods should apply at three convictions, instead of five.
“What we were finding out was that youngsters or young people that were carrying firearms, by the time they got to five [convictions], they would already have committed a serious offense and end up facing decades of prison time in adult court for murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, or they were shot and killed themselves,” Hackney said.
In 2025, Hackney sponsored a bill that would have allowed a judge to impose more than a month of detention after the third gun conviction. But the bill failed without a hearing.
“My colleagues in the Legislature, they call juvenile justice reform basically making it harder and harder to incarcerate juveniles. They say that it traumatizes them. So does violent crime traumatize the community,” Hackney said.
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.
The longer a child spends in a juvenile detention center, the more likely they are to commit more serious crimes later and the more likely they are to develop long-lasting mental health problems from their time in detention, according to research from the Sentencing Project.
“Sending a kid away from home interrupts their education, their employment, any number of things in their lives that offer some stability,” Rovner said.
His organization advocates for greater use of counseling and behavioral support programs rather than detention and harsher sentences.
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.”
Rather, Manion said her aim is to shorten the amount of time between when youth first get caught with weapons and when they might get connected with programming that can help take guns out of their hands.
Manion added that connecting at-risk youth with services, like behavioral programs, can be more effective in detention because they’re removed from problems at home or in their neighborhood. And putting youth charged with gun possession in detention sooner could get them off the streets before they commit harsher crimes – like homicide – that would carry adult sentences and possibly decades in jail, Manion said.
“What I really want to do is to offer young people interventions at an earlier point in time, because I really want us to try to change juvenile thinking and behavior as it comes to possessing firearms,” she said.
Manion worked with Hackney on his bill last year. She said she plans to work with him again to reintroduce the bill ahead of the 2027 Legislative session.
