Snohomish County looking to expand no-shooting zones after stray bullet nearly hits child

After a stray bullet nearly hit a 4-year-old girl in Monroe, Snohomish County Councilmember Sam Low has introduced an emergency ordinance that would expand the no-shooting zone around the city. Now, the council wants to hear from the public. Low joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH to discuss.

“This is a growing area of Monroe up on the hill. There’s been about 800 homes added in the last several years in this area that used to be just kind of rolling hills and nothing else there. All of a sudden, we have all this development there, and over the last few years we’ve had several shooting incidents. The last two over the last year and a half have been bullets that have come from unincorporated county into the city and hitting residences in the city,” he said.

It seems that the shootings haven’t been nefarious in nature but are accidental, often occurring around the holidays from stray bullets.

“Ironically, on both of these that have hit houses, they’ve actually happened on holidays. So the last one happened on July 4 of this year, and the previous one happened on December 31 a year and a half ago. So it appears there’s a couple of yahoos or people that just like to go shooting and shoot a little haphazardly on holidays. And maybe that’s what’s contributing to this,” he said.

In the city of Monroe, outdoor shooting is already illegal, but the bullets have been coming from unincorporated areas, which is why they’re trying to expand the no-shooting zone.

“All of our cities are no-shooting areas and actually almost all of our urban growth areas are no-shooting areas too, with the exception of this area of Monroe. In 1991 when this was last looked at, it was a very unpopulated area. Now almost 30 years later, and there’s just a tremendous amount of development,” he said.

“I’m a big supporter of our Second Amendment rights and a big supporter of guns,” he added. “And yet there’s a right place to shoot and a proper place to shoot, and right next to a residential neighborhood with a bunch of kids — there’s about 40-some kids in this neighborhood — is just not a good area to be haphazard with guns.”