Thirty years ago, my world stopped. I was just out of college when my brother, Arnie, was killed by a student who brought a firearm to Frontier Junior High School in Moses Lake. In minutes, he was gone, along with a teacher, Leona Caires, and another student, Manuel Vela Jr. Another student, Natalie Hintz, was critically injured, and more than a dozen students were held hostage. Arnie was 14 years old.
Every year, February comes with its own weight for my family. Other people may move through the month without thinking twice. We, unfortunately, can’t. We live in the permanent deficit of the years Arnie never got to have. As his anniversary passed again this year, I found myself struck by the sheer volume of life that was stolen from him, and how avoidable that theft was. Unfortunately, my family’s tragedy isn’t unique.
The loss, obviously, didn’t hit us once and then pass. It settled in and stayed. I watched my mom carry a heavy weight no one should ever have to carry. I watched his friends try to make sense of trauma they were too young to name. And I watched our community absorb a heartbreak that never really healed. Grief doesn’t disappear with time. It changes shape, but it stays with you. It becomes part of the air you breathe.
People often ask me why I lead the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. The answer is simple: I am fighting for the “what if.”
What if Washington had the kind of safe storage requirements we have been pushing for since 1996? What if that gun had been inaccessible to a child? Arnie would have come home. I would be calling my brother to talk about our lives instead of writing an op-ed to defend his memory and ask for safeguards that should already be the norm.
This year, we worked to move safe storage forward in Olympia, but it did not receive the urgency it deserved and the bill stalled. That is hard to accept.
Gun violence remains the leading cause of death for children and teens in our country. Often overlooked is the fact that young people are more likely to be victims of unintentional shootings, domestic violence, or suicide. In Washington alone, suicide accounts for 53 percent of all youth firearm deaths.
The reality around storage is just as sobering. Fifty-four percent of gun owners fail to lock all their guns securely. An estimated 4.6 million children in the United States live in a home with at least one unlocked and loaded firearm. Nearly 360 children unintentionally shoot themselves or someone else each year. The U.S. Secret Service has reported that 76 percent of school shooters acquired their firearm from the home of a parent or close relative.
These numbers are not abstract. They point to something preventable.
We have made progress in Washington before. Voters and lawmakers have taken steps that have reduced harm and strengthened accountability. This session, however, was a reminder that progress is not guaranteed. When basic safety measures fail to move forward, it sends a message about what is, and is not, being prioritized.
Secure storage is not controversial. It is about responsibility. It is about making sure a moment of anger, despair, or curiosity does not lead to a lifetime of loss. Unsecured guns do not simply sit untouched. They are found. And when they are found by children, the consequences are permanent.
My work is fueled by the silence Arnie left behind. It is a drive to make sure no other sister has to measure her life in decades of considering what might have been. We have the tools. We have the evidence. What we need is consistent leadership that treats child safety as urgent, not optional.
The bill may not have moved forward this year. But the need did not disappear. And neither did the families who are still waiting for change.
Let’s not lose another Arnie.
