A rash of recent gun incidents is concerning – in part because there is no easy solution to fix the problem.

Mayor Eddie Sundquist, City Council President Tony Dolce and Timothy Jackson, Jamestown police chief, announced Monday a plan to hire three new police officers to form a gun violence unit.

One incident involved a 64-year-old man pointing a handgun at city firefighters on East Second Street before entering the police station and showing the weapon to an officer before being taken into custody. Then a 17-year-old was charged after being found with a stolen AR-15 near South Main and Harrison streets moments after a man had been shot and killed near East Sixth Street – though there is no reported connection between the two incidents. A 16-year-old was charged following a traffic stop Saturday in the area of Grant and East Seventh streets and was found with a loaded handgun after trying to run away from police. And, a 21-year-old faces weapons possession charges for the third time in 2022.

Jamestown is still, by and large, a safe place to live and in which to raise a family. But city residents would be naive to think this rash of gun incidents isn’t a risk to metastacize like a cancer. And it would be just as naive to think that harsher gun laws will be a miracle cure. While some tougher bail laws and judicial discretion in setting bail could help, that, too, is no panacea.

Jackson said along with working with local police departments, the city is also working with the FBI, which can allow the city to bypass the state’s bail reform laws to ensure some who are alleged to have committed gun crimes aren’t issued an appearance ticket for a future court date. Such work is indicative of the many small steps that will be needed to quell the gun violence issues in the city.

The fact there is no single cause nor a single solution doesn’t mean our community can just throw its collective hands in the air. The consequences of these gun-related incidents are real for all and deadly for some. Jamestown is still a place where most gun crimes are targeted incidents focused on the drug trade — but a city’s reputation as a haven for gunplay hurts property values and homeownership rates, two longstanding trends that only the most recent pandemic-fueled housing boom reversed.

We may be unsure of the full path forward, but we know it can’t include apathy among city residents and their elected officials. What we’re doing locally – and how we’re trying to influence new policies at the state and federal levels – need to be a regular topic of our public discourse.

This is a problem we can’t ignore.