On today’s third anniversary of the tragedy at Cafe Racer, Cheryl Stumbo and Walt Stawicki – father of Racer shooter Ian Stawicki – came together to remember the tragedy and call for action to pass Extreme Risk Protection Orders:

“Three years ago, tragedy struck at Seattle’s Café Racer, shining a spotlight on the difficult interrelationship between easy access to firearms and the ravages of mental illness. Unfortunately, the Café Racer shooting was neither the first nor last time family members of a shooter have shared the pain and anxiety of trying to seek help for a loved one whom they feared would slip into violence without treatment—and without a tool to keep guns out of their hands.

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Extreme Risk Protection Orders can address this potentially tragic problem by enabling family members, as well as law enforcement officials, to obtain a protection order to temporarily remove access to firearms when an individual is threatening to commit terrible harm. Those are people like Naveed Haq, who shot Cheryl in a politically-motivated attack on the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle in 2006, and Walt’s son, Ian Stawicki, who killed himself and five others at Cafe Racer three years ago today. Both Naveed and Ian showed signs of distress and of their intentions, just like over half of all mass shooters over the last 20 years.

The tragedies that ruptured our lives—the attack on Cafe Racer three years ago and on the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle in 2006—led us to become advocates for strengthening Washington’s gun laws. We’ve pursued different paths in the years since we became survivors. But we both support Extreme Risk Protection Orders because those shootings might never have occurred if family members had this path to intervene. Unfortunately, the Extreme Risk Protection Orders bill stalled in Olympia this year due to political pressure from an old foe—the National Rifle Association and their legislative allies.”

Read their full editorial at The Stranger.