Another US mass shooting leaves 3 dead, 6 wounded in Seattle

A shooting at a hookah lounge in the major northwest US city of Seattle has killed three and wounded six people, police declared but offered no information on the perpetrator(s).

The Seattle Police Department (SPD) stated on Sunday that officers responded to the crime scene at a hookah lounge in the Mount Baker neighborhood at around 4:30 a.m. local time after receiving multiple 911 calls. It did not immediately release any information on possible suspects.

Officials said two men aged 22 and 30 died at the scene, and a 30-year-old woman died later at the Harborview Medical Center, adding that five guns were discovered at the scene.

Only one of the six wounded people, who were all either in their twenties or thirties, was in critical condition, officials added.

SPD Chief Adrian Diaz said during a press conference that police was not only investigating the cause of the hookah lounge incident, but also, why so many shooting incidents took place, in general, and how to prevent them.

“That's really what we're also trying to figure out. How do we stop this? How do we make our communities safer?” Diaz said at the press briefing, according to KING News.

“It seems like every incident that we're coming across, people are having a gun. Whether it's, you know, whether it's drug-related, whether it's conflict-related, sometimes it's drive-by, sometimes it's road rage, sometimes it's domestic violence, but it seems like everybody is carrying a gun,” Diaz pointed out. “And that is something that we got to figure out how to address.”

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a statement that even as Seattle police “keeps up a rapid and record pace of recovering guns – 869 through July – there are still more illegal guns in the wrong hands that could be used to incite another tragedy like this one.”

US gun epidemic: How many more lives would it take to jolt America awake?

No place, public or private, has been spared by the scourge of gun violence in America: schools, university campuses, hospitals, shopping malls, nightclubs, sports centers and people’s living rooms.

US President Joe Biden has called on Congress to enact federal legislation to address the country’s gun "epidemic".

Biden urged US lawmakers repeatedly to devise stricter laws against guns. “I can’t dictate this stuff.” 

However, Republican lawmakers, who are staunch defenders of US arms manufacturers and aim to push gun sales up keep reminding the Americans' constitutional right to bear arms, oppose the Democratic president’s calls for stricter gun regulations.

Meanwhile, a Gallup poll from October 2022 showed that the majority of Americans are in favor of imposing gun controls to curb gun-related violence in the United States.

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