My state of birth is Washington State. I was fortunate to grow up in a state with stunning mountains, plentiful pine trees, and more sunshine than one might expect. When I started shooting and hunting I discovered something else: Washington State had darn good laws relating to gun rights and awesome hunting opportunities.
Fast forward to 2018. Washington State has become the next California.
Just four years ago Washington antis made sure I-594 passed. They presented it as a “common-sense gun law” – cue catchphrases – and claimed it included things like “reasonable exceptions” and that it would “not create a registry.” What is it? Basically, I-594 requires a transfer through an FFL for every imaginable gun exchange.
Thanks to I-594 there is no loan exemption for that moment you want to hand a gun to a friend, no exemption to loan a gun to your adult child or friend for a hunt, and no simple emergency hand-over of a firearm to your sister or daughter who is being stalked by a violent, abusive ex. The law is purposefully written to be vague and open to interpretation.
If you think the law allows gun loans, proceed with caution. Consult a lawyer. The legal definition of “immediately necessary” and “imminent death or great bodily harm” is likely different than your own. Remember, it is not what you know, it’s what you can prove. As for hunting, the final bill is written in a manner that leaves it open to interpretation whether or not someone can possess a firearm that is not theirs, meant for hunting, at any moment other than during the active hunt. Bottom line tends to be it depends on the whim of the person enforcing the law.
Want to casually loan a gun to a visiting friend who is attending a training class at the local academy? Nope. Want to conduct a private firearms sale to someone you’ve known for twenty years? You have to head to an FFL, fill out the paperwork, and pay the fees. There is no such thing as a private sale in Washington State anymore.
I-594 claimed it was necessary to “close the gun-show loophole.” If you’ve attended one of the big Washington Arms Collector gun shows in Washington, you know there’s no loophole.
You can check out I-594 here.
Moving on…
In 2014, in the comments section of a blog titled “Washington State Now Has the Strictest Gun Laws in the Country” on I-594 by Annette Wachter – better known as the 30 Cal Gal – someone by the name of Colin made this remark:
While I agree this is a step backwards for gun rights in our state, I think the title of your article is a bit misleading. As much as it sucks, if I had to choose, I’d much rather be living under something like 594…than something like the SAFE Act.
Oh, Colin (and here I hope this is not the Washington State resident Colin I am acquainted with who is an avid shooter and hunter). Here’s how this crap works. They typically start small before moving on to bigger things. The old adage of giving an inch and them taking a mile couldn’t be more accurate. So, Colin, your comment was unwittingly prescient.
Introducing I-1639.
Washington State Initiative I-1639 does many things. It raises the legal age to buy a semi-automatic rifle to 21, makes training mandatory for those who purchase semi-automatic rifles, adds on various things to the existing background check, enacts a ten-day waiting period for the aforementioned purchases… <takes a deep breath> … legally requires law-abiding gun owners to secure firearms at home in specific ways, and introduces the possibility for those law-abiding gun owners to face misdemeanor or felony charges if a person prohibited from possessing firearms somehow accesses their firearms. Yes, there’s more. The initiative’s definition of what constitutes a “semi-automatic assault rifle” – yes, they repeatedly refer to them that way in the initiative – is rather broad. Read the entirety of I-1639 here.
I-1639 doesn’t only violate Second Amendment rights, it violates Fourth Amendment rights.
Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation, which is based in Washington State, is fighting hard against the initiative. He almost succeeded, too. Gottlieb and the NRA challenged the legality of the campaign’s signature-gathering process, and Thurston County Super Court Judge James Dixon ruled in his favor. The judge blocked the initiative from being put on the ballot this fall, saying the formatting of the signature puetitions “did not comport” with Washington State law.
Judge Dixon also said “…this court does not struggle with this issue.” The law does indeed state petitions “must have a readable, full, true, correct copy of the proposed measure.”
There was plenty of admission of potential wrongdoing, too. Secretary of State Kim Wyman, who certified the measure for the ballot, admitted she had “concerns” about how the signatures had been gathered, but covered her ass by saying she had “no legal authority” to stop it from happening.
Even The Alliance for Gun Responsibility – the group that led the signature-gathering efforts – admitted publicly that their methods were rather unsavory. Of course, they didn’t actually say “unsavory,” they claimed it was a “technical error” that led to their petition omitting important information.
Right. If you believe that, I have ocean-front property in Arizona for sale <insert George Strait song here>.
At first it looked like a victory for the Second Amendment Foundation and the NRA. We were all excited even though we realized the judge’s ruling would be challenged. In the end, it didn’t take long. Judge Dixon handed down the ruling to block I-1639 from the ballot on Friday, August 17th. By the following Friday, August 24th, the Washington State Supreme Court had ruled the initiative would appear on the ballot in November.
Apparently following the letter of the law doesn’t apply in the Washington State Supreme Court. It was Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst who signed the four-page order to reverse Judge Dixon’s rule; Fairhurst must feel the Washington State Constitution and laws such as RCW 29A.72.100 can be ignored in the case of I-1639.
PETITIONS – PAPER – SIZE – CONTENTS
The person proposing the measure shall print blank petitions upon single sheets of paper of good writing quality (including but not limited to newsprint) not less than eleven inches wide and not less than fourteen inches in length. Each petition at the time of circulating, signing, and filing with the secretary of state must consist of not more than one sheet with numbered lines for not more than twenty signatures, with the prescribed warning and title, be in the form required by RCW 29A.72.110, 29A.72.120, or 29A.72.130, and have a readable, full, true, and correct copy of the proposed measure printed on the reverse side of the petition.
The Washington State Constitution states:
Every such petition shall include the full text of the measure so proposed.
Nut graf: Washington State Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst ignored RCW 29A.72.100 in order to get I-1639 on the November ballot. I-1639 is an anti-gun initiative that will affect us all, not only Washington State residents. If you live in Washington, get your ass to the poll this fall. If you do not live in Washington, find a way to help fight this. Love your gun rights? Learn to fight for them.
Contact the Second Amendment Foundation at their website here to find out what you can do to help.
Check out NRA-ILA here.
Check out Washington State Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst’s Facebook page here and her contact information at the courthouse here.
So happy I moved away from that crap hole.
Ya…. that’s what ex-Californians said 10 years ago when they moved to Washington. You can run from California but if you don’t stand your ground and fight, it will follow you.
Cudos to Illinois state residents for their gun sanctuary counties. And bravo to upstate NY residents for defying enforcement of the SAFE Act.
I completely understand and would agree, but if the law has no meaning, then what options are left?
you can thank the cockroach in the gov’s office, he is an avowed anti american socialist idiot. along with the succession of mayors,chief’s of police and the communist city councils in seattle and belvue. all are either socialist,marxist or out rite communists. QUIT VOTING FOR THE FREE SHIT DEMOCRATS ,,VOTE INDEPENDANT OR REPUBLICAN . THE OLD ADDAGE OF NOTHING IS FREE IS THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH….
You meant to say “Vote independent or Libertarian”. The Republicans time and time again have sold us out. They use the second amendment as a carrot on a stick to get us to the voting booth but after they get into office they conveniently have “more important” issues to work on than restoring/expanding our right to self defense.
It’s called the Left Coast for a reason. The LEFT Coast.
I hate being a harbinger of doom but these folks will eventually get the civil war they’re unwittingly begging for.
X2 What Rad man said.
Well, except for the part about hating to bring it up. Thinking this country can be saved at the ballot box is a fools errand. Too many Judge Fairhurst’s at this point. The rule of law is being ignored.
I have to echo this as well. The soap box and ballot box are irrelevant because we’re out numbered. The jury box is irrelevant because the law is simply ignored. All that will be left is the ammo box.
I’m afraid you’re right.
It will undoubtedly PASS. A mass shooting away from having to move.
Nothing special needs to happen. The demographics of the state guarantee that it will pass.
Correction: The demographics of (Stin)King County will prevail, assisted by the populations of the Tacoma-Everett corridor, and to a lesser extent Spokane. I moved to southwestern Arizona five years ago with no (zero, zip, nada) regrets…
not understand the anti-gun goal of some states
us demonrat-commie goal = confiscation, so you can be killed while defenseless. easier for them.
It seems the west coast is doomed by all the transplanted nut cases from Kalfornia that have moved to Washington.
Not much different then all the transplanted jackwipes from the North East slave states moving here to South Florida. They are poluting everything that made Florida a great state to live in.
I had a door knock from a Philip Levine volunteer today, and rather than give him a metric ton of shit, I just told him I was a registered Republican…
Same here as I was wearing my gun at the time. As I always home carry.
That got a good reaction too.
“WASHINGTON IS THE NEW CALIFORNIA”
BLASPHEMY!!! BURN THE WITCH!!!
Easy snowflake…. I’ll take it over from here.
You can thank the ones from California that left and changed Washington and Oregon into lib/dem bastions…at least in the cities…
But the cities have all the population…thus all the votes/power…like New York
I used to think the initiative process for passing laws was a good idea. Or I was at least neutral on the idea. But seeing how it has been used to pass BS laws that couldn’t make it through the legislature has changed my mind. There’s no shortage of low IQ voters in the metro counties that can steamroll those of us who engage our brain before voting.
Ballot initiatives are a direct circumvention of a republican form of government, and should be subjected to much higher scrutiny than the process of drafting bills and debating them by the legislatures.
I personally think that initiatives, in addition to being as detailed and truthful as possible should only become law if they’re approved by a minimum of 75 percent of the voters. Then, there’s no doubt that it truly is “the will of the people”.
Nope. Wrong.
“The word republic, derived from the Latin res publica, or “public thing,” refers to a form of government where the citizens conduct their affairs for their own benefit rather than for the benefit of a ruler.”
There is nothing about a republic that excludes direct democracy within a constitutional framework.
Initiatives are democracy carried to the logical end (mob rule).
If you can convince enough people that “there aughtta be a law!”, that’s how to do it.
The idea behind a republic is that the people who are tasked with writing the laws will debate the proposed laws, and hear the different sides concerning that proposed law.
Initiatives don’t do that. They aren’t debated, they are bumper-stickered. And we see, too often, what we see in Washington: even the laws concerning initiatives aren’t followed if the initiative pushes what the judge agrees with.
We elect lawmakers. We should, then, either let them do their job, or admit that we want the mob to rule.
Yep. There’s a good reason why we elect representatives instead of making laws ourselves.
This abomination and the I-594 initiative are entirely composed of garbage that the WA state legislature — with bipartisan votes — has repeatedly refused to pass, precisely because it is garbage.
But you get a few million dollars in pocket change from Gates, Allen, and Hanauer, polish it up so the vote-my-feelings crowd can’t see the putrescence beneath, and you’ve got yourself a progressive winner. No need to ask the government to make a law that won’t pass because legislators know a pile of shit when they see one. Just polish it up and tell the people it smells great, and the voters will dump that shit on themselves.
I live in Washington State and while I don’t like the guns laws including I 594, there are inaccuracies.
I-594 was tweaked by legislature. Handing your weapon to someone during lawful hunting is not illegal.
Here is a link to the final bill report. Note, this is now law in Washington State.
http://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2017-18/Pdf/Bill%20Reports/Senate/5552-S.E%20SBR%20FBR%2017.pdf
Thank you.
Too bad the author of this article didn’t bother to do 2 minutes of research. As a result, what we have here is a pretty flagrant case of “fake news”.
If Tim Eyman, scourge of the left wing and initiative king, had handed in a proposal like this the WA St. Supreme Court would have hammered it into the ground and probably begged to have him fined if not locked up. But, that is what you get when your highest court is merely a partisan club acting on the behalf of the Democratic Party. So, not surprised it is left on the ballot, and it will be pass because the wondrously diverse city of Seattle goose steps to voting 93% in only one direction. Diversity of thought is not allowed here.
I don’t think I will be returning to the Northwest when I retire. Their total lack of respect for constitutional rights, understanding of economics, and lack of leaving people alone has turned me more towards the south. I will miss the mild weather in the parts of the state I lived in, but being harassed by the government for existing is not high on my list of things I want in life.
Idaho.
Although Washington State has a pretty strong constitution as far as guns, if they get too funky, I’ll move 15 miles east to Idaho and Washington can just SMD.
I live in Idaho and work in Washington. I hold a WA CCP so I can legally carry during my daily commute. It’s worked well for ten+ years.
Since you are an Idaho resident, get an resident enhanced permit. The only places on the west side of the US you can’t carry is Oregon and California and Washington CPL doesn’t work those places either. The first state you can’t carry in going east is Illinois, then Florida, Pennsylvania and a few others. An Idaho resident enhanced is about as good a permit as you can get, far better than a Utah. I mean, since you are Idaho resident!
The Constitution means nothing if it is simply ignored. Laws are simply declared to mean what they need to mean at the moment for whatever particular need. Voting is irrelevant if whatever legislation is passed will just be rewritten on the fly whenever it is convenient.
Yeah, gun laws were one of the reasons why I moved across the border to Idaho. Seattle is so left that there was no Republican running for the House in 2016 in my district. Only 8% of the Seattle vote went to Trump.
A couple of months back two mountain bikers were attacked by a cougar outside of Seattle. Reading the account in the Seattle Times the reader was led to believe that they were two men. I thought so and wondered what kind of a friend would run away while his buddy was being attacked. The cougar released the first biker and went for the runner. The runner who was killed was identified as S. J. Brooks. I later found out, not from the Seattle Times, that S. J. Brooks was a woman but she didn’t identify as a woman!
Oh, and the Seattle Times never mentioned that Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife had a proposal to increase the cougar quota because cougars were becoming more of a problem with several attacks prevented with firearms and other means. Governor Jay Inslee acting on pressure from animal rights groups nixed the increase.
I am sure S. J. Brooks was all for Inslee’s actions,,, until that cougar had her/he by the neck.
Anyway I had had it with Washington and its ridiculous PC. People from all over the world moved there and seem to immediately try to make it like the places they fled.
Running away while your friend is being attacked by a mountain lion revokes your man card. She had her chance to prove she was really a man but blew it.
There are plenty of women who have the balls to stand up to something like that and not run away. Will also add that running away from something like a bear or cougar is just delaying tactics. Far more sense to Stand Your Ground and fight back. You have a better chance of survival if you do. Much the same as being attacked by any predator. Running you have almost 100% chance of death, fight back yes chances of death are still high but reduced….. I’ll take the reduced chance
Well she wasn’t one of those women and it got her killed. Her real name was Sonja Brooks. You won’t see that in the PC Seattle Times.
Nope she was not and yes it got her killed. I also agree you wont see that in the Times or any other PC leftist news source. They however dont care how many get killed so long as they get the power they desire
When I was in Washington state last year I could not hire or borrow any sort of firearm because of I 594 interpretation by local police to range staff. I could in California!
I can lend firearms in Australia easier than Washington. Still ok at range to just say do you want to try this?
Commiefornia is a carcinogen,like cancer it spreads .
Californian assholes moved away from a cesspool of their own making, then upon arriving in a new place with more freedom immediately began converting it to another sewer.
It is impossible to move out of a sewer when you are so stupid as to shit in your own bed.
I’ve been telling the ‘just move’ bunch for years. Go ahead and move. CA will follow.
You want to break socialism in America? You have to break CA. Running from it will just make you to tired to care when the last of your rights are gone.
There comes a times when you have to decide if its best to be with like minded individuals or stay in a socialist progressive society. I chose the former.
The west coast is attracting socialists from outside the United States. It was an Indian socialist immigrant who proposed the $500 per employee tax in Seattle.
Build that wall!!
Most otherwise law-abiding gun owners are going to thumb their noses at this law, because it won’t be a valid law.
Quote: “Most otherwise law-abiding gun owners are going to thumb their noses at this law, because it won’t be a valid law.”
To split hairs:
Assuming it gets voted in it will be a valid law because the Washington State supreme court said the petition was valid.
It will be an unconstitutional law because it violates the second amendment.
Hopefully it will be overturned by the US Supreme Court some time in the future.
But I expect the time is coming when it will pay for us all to Be Prepared !
Nope. Wrong.
“An unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation as inoperative as though it had never been passed.”
U.S. Supreme Court
Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425 (1886)
Yet in the meantime, they still get to put you in jail and ruin your life.
It was to be expected. The people of Washington will dig their own grave voting for this. Expect millions upon millions of dollars being spent by Bloomberg to support it.
Washington state I believe is lost. I’m pretty sure the next ballot will outlaw all semi-automatic everything and ban the purchase and make ammunition illegal to own completely with no grandfathering. Every single solitary semi-automatic rifle, handgun and shotgun blanket banned with no grandfathering with door-to-door confiscation with a one-day turn in period. Including all of your ammunition. After that door to door confiscation. If found with a banned gun you will be executed immediately without trial. Your property will be seized and your family sent to forced labor camps.
And SCOTUS will still refuse to hear it.
Quote: The people of Washington will dig their own grave voting for this.
No. No they are not. Ballots prepared and collected in King County and tabulated by the flunkies of megalomaniac oligarchs are deciding the outcome of EVERY statewide election in Washington State.
Quote: The people of Washington will dig their own grave voting for this.
No. No they are not. Ballots prepared and collected in King County and tabulated by the flunkies of megalomanic oligarchs are deciding the outcome of EVERY statewide election in Washington State.
I’m so glad I left California. The Mulford Act had been on the books for 13 years by the time I joined the Army. I saw how the state was changing. It was only small numbers of people urinating and defecating in public back then. And the laws were not enforced back then very much. the Libertarians Liberals and the Left generally looked the other way. Now years latter its socially acceptable to “just whip it out” and piss in public. It started in Berkeley first. Then it moved to San Francisco were they now map out the “sh*t” areas in the city.
Any one who thinks its ok to piss and sh*t in public also supports gun control. Because they don’t want to be held accountable by any type social order. The pot heads and the homosexuals who wanted there “rights”, historically they never supported gun civil rights. And they still don’t. In fact the white pot head leadership said back in the 1970s said that if the blacks could just sell weed legally there would be no need for blacks to have guns. Individual homosexuals want guns. But they work to elect anti second amendment leaders.
In Kentucky industrial hemp paid the bills and made many farmers very wealthy. But on the west coast they only think about getting their marijuana intoxication. Even Rand Paul who is a small (L) libertarian, is working to make industrial hemp farming legal in the state. If he is successful hemp farms could become legal nation wide. But Boxer and Feinstein in California never cared about industrial hemp. And the pot heads kept electing them anyway, because they are anti gun. Rand Paul is not very excited about making more intoxication legal. In the land of and tradition of home brew illegal stills, everyone supports gun civil rights.
In the land of the pot heads and gay pride, both are socialist progressive in their political orientation. And they don’t support gun civil rights.
“Thanks to I-594 there is no loan exemption for that moment you want to hand a gun to a family member or friend, no exemption to loan a gun to your adult child or friend for a hunt, and no emergency hand-over of a firearm to your sister or daughter who is being stalked by a violent, abusive ex.”
This is simply false. Information to that effect was posted earlier in a comment, then it disappeared. TTAG has outed itself as a fake news site.
Yeah how about that. I posted a link to a Washington Legislature web site and the post disappeared.
Fake news is fake news no matter who is creating it. To see my post vanish really let the air out of my tires for me on this website TTAGs. Washington State has gun laws I don’t agree with. But really, we don’t have a semi-auto ban, a magazine capacity limit ban, as far as I know the only thing we can’t own here no matter how deep your pockets are…unless you a cop or something, is full automatic. We couldn’t even have a SBR until recently. If this initiative becomes law, which I suspect it will, the biggest pain will be having to do some carbine class if I want to purchase a modern sporting rifle.
PS: I’m not sure if the poster of these articles has the ability to delete comments or if that was TTAGs, either way……NOT GOOD!
As you said David “TTAG has outed itself as a fake news site”
The semi-auto ban and magazine restrictions are only a matter of time. That will be next year’s ballot, or maybe the next.
It’s unfortunate that TTAG took down your posts with the links to the updated information about I-594. It’s a disservice to readers. But let’s not kid ourselves. Gun rights are doomed in Washington state, and the initiative process is how they are going to be killed.
It’s a short move across the border.
Not from Seattle. The closest border is three hours away and that’s Oregon, which is a lateral move, at best.
Quote the website, don’t link it. I think that the linking is the issue.
It is not false. The language of the bill was written to be purposefully vague. Regarding the loaning of a gun in a situation of someone who is afraid of, say, an ex…the law is written framing the exemption specifically for “imminent” death and danger. Your idea of imminence is probably different than a lawyer’s or judge’s. Something else you will hear time and again is it isn’t what you know, it’s what you can prove (regarding fear of violence). In addition it states the transfer is only allowed for the time immediately relating to immediate harm. You will find many, if not most, lawyers will not interpret it as meaning however long someone is uncomfortable.
Words have meaning. In a legal setting their meaning is intensified.
As for hunting, even that portion of the law is vague. Do not read laws looking for what you want to see, read them as someone on the other side would. Can you hand someone a gun at your home for a hunt and let them wander around with it for the duration of hunting season or are you only legally able to allow them to use it during an actual hunt and not a moment longer? Leaving laws open to interpretation means you will be subject to the whims of the legal authority interpreting it.
And work not to spread information that might encourage someone to unwittingly break laws. It’s extremely important.
Happy I left the west coast for the Gunshine state!
It’s one thing to pass a unconstitutional law, it is quite another to attempt to enforce it. This may fly with new law enforcement officers in the Seattle area, but even I-594 is not enforced in the rest of the state. Every L.E. Officer I have talked with has told me that they will not enforce I-594 as it is vague and not enforceable. How many people have been prosecuted since I-594 was enacted? Maybe two and these were not regular citizens but convicted felons. So pass all the laws you want, we will not comply.
Just more proof that authoritarians will break the law to infringe your rights. We could get a SCOTUS ruling that all infringements of the 2A are illegal at all levels of government, and we’ll still have states, counties, and cities ignoring it and fighting to disarm the people. The people should follow their consciences, not the dictum of lawless governments.
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