Making sure that firearms surrender orders are enforced

Successful partnership reduced domestic violence crimes

Since 2018, King County’s Regional Domestic Violence Firearms Enforcement Unit has worked to ensure firearm surrender orders in domestic violence cases are actually enforced.

The partnership (between the King County Prosecutor’s Office, King County Sheriff’s Office, Seattle City Attorney’s Office & Seattle Police), has led to a 27% drop in crimes committed by people ordered to surrender firearms and reduced crime severity by more than 20%.

This is life-saving work for domestic violence survivors: because when domestic violence abusers have access to firearms the rate of intimate partner homicide increases by 500%.

Read more here about the results of this work