SEATTLE — Seattle's annual Northwest Folklife Festival is a throwback to the hippie days, a laid-back celebration of folk music, grilled salmon and sandals with socks in a city that has always considered laid-back a point of civic pride.
So when 19-year-old Joshua Penaluna felt a sharp pain in his wrist after two men came bursting toward him through the crowd at last May's festival, he assumed he had merely broken a bone as he fell.
"Then I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, he's been shot,' " Penaluna recalled recently.
Penaluna's girlfriend was also hit by the stray bullet and another person was injured. The shootings, in a city where sporadic but horrific incidents of violent street crime rattle its culture of progressive cool, sent Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels on a mission: banning guns on city property, including at parks, sporting events and street fairs. Next month, he will hold a public hearing on his executive order.
In a state where more than 239,000 residents have permits to carry concealed weapons -- and many consider a gun in their pocket a better deterrent to street crime than any law the mayor may think up -- the proposal appears almost certain to become a local gun control battle in a year when the courts and possibly the administration of President-elect Barack Obama are set to redefine the national debate.
After a Supreme Court ruling in June that the 2nd Amendment explicitly protects Americans' right to own guns for self-defense, gun rights advocates are gearing up for a new round of court cases in California, Chicago and elsewhere. The cases will determine how far the justices' decision striking down the District of Columbia's handgun ban can be extended to state and local governments.
In Seattle, the battle will be over a Washington state law that specifically reserves the "entire field of firearms regulation" to the state. Last month, the state attorney general's office issued an opinion that Nickels could not legally preempt state law with the handgun ban.
No matter. The mayor's staff announced Friday that he was proceeding with a public hearing Dec. 15 to take testimony on the proposed administrative rule that would go into effect next spring, making anyone entering city property with a gun guilty of criminal trespassing.
