Assault weapon ban on sales and import in Washington heads to Inslee for final approval

How they voted Substitute House Bill 1240 would prohibit the manufacture, importation, distribution and sale of firearms it classifies as “assault weapons,” with some exemptions. It passed the House of Representatives with a 56-42 vote. Of Spokane-are lawmakers, Republican Reps. Mary Dye, Joe Schmick, Suzanne Schmidt, Leonard Christian, Jacquelin Maycumber, Joel Kretz, Jenny Graham and Mike Volz voted against the bill. Democrat Reps. Marcus Riccelli and Timm Ormsby voted for the bill.

OLYMPIA – A wide-ranging ban on assault weapons, with some exemptions, is headed for the governor’s desk after passing the House of Representatives Wednesday.

Representatives voted 56-42 to pass the bill with votes largely along party lines, though two Democrats joined the Republicans in a no vote.

The controversial bill – which restricts the manufacturing, importation, distribution and sale of semi-automatic military style rifles – cleared its last vote after a game of legislative ping-pong that involved three votes in the House and two in the Senate. Each chamber took advantage of their ability make changes to the bill, and the House approved a version that cleared the Senate Tuesday.

The final hurdle involved a Senate amendment that would have exempted active-duty military personnel and retirees from the ban. It received bipartisan support in the Senate but ran afoul of House parliamentary rules and was later stripped from the final bill.

This exemption would have applied to the more than 63,000 active-duty members in the state, plus an unknown number of military retirees living in the state.

“I’m appalled at the disrespect this will bring to military members coming into our state to be stationed here in Washington state,” said Rep. Leonard Christian, R-Spokane Valley. “They will be criminalized for simply having a weapon that they had purchased legally in most of the other states in the nation.”

Gov. Jay Inslee is expected to sign the bill.

Although it will remain legal to continue owning the semi-automatic military style rifles already in the state when the law becomes effective after Inslee signs it, people moving to the state would be prohibited from bringing them to Washington.

On Tuesday, the Senate agreed to rescind the amendment that would have allowed members of the military and veterans to bring their military-style rifles to Washington, but added another to clarify that Washington residents traveling out of the state with an assault weapon and returning with the same firearm would not be prohibited under the bill’s definition of “import.”

The amendment also made clear that Washington gun dealers would have 90 days to sell their existing stock of assault weapons to out-of-state buyers.

Jeremy Ball, owner of Sharp Shooting Indoor Range and Gun Shop in Spokane, said 90 days isn’t enough time for retailers to sell their existing inventory. Retailers are turning to websites to sell their wares, he said, and the three-month window doesn’t offer enough time for a retailer to create a website, list their stock and garner a customer base.

“So you have to basically develop your website, or sales channel, organically. That takes far more than 90 days,” Ball said.

Ball said consumers typically opt to purchase firearms in their home state, so the window applying only to out-of-state customers provides another challenge for retailers in the scramble to sell inventory.

Washington retailers would have to offer competitive prices to clear their shelves and could lose money in the process, he predicted.

“Trying to talk a dealer into buying a gun from another dealer versus them buying it from a manufacturer or distributor is hard,” Ball said.

Supporters of the ban said the trend of mass shootings in the United States justifies the bill’s quick turnaround. There have been 165 mass shootings so far this year where four or more people were shot or killed besides the shooter, according to Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun violence in the United States.

“I don’t propose and I don’t think you believe either that this bill is going to end that scourge of gun violence across the country or in our state, but it’s going to do something,” said bill sponsor Rep. Strom Peterson, D-Edmonds. “It is going to slow the proliferation of these mass gun violence incidents that have taken place in our schools, and our grocery stores, in our neighborhood banks, in our movie theaters. We have to do something.”

Republicans said courts will find the ban unconstitutional and a waste of the Legislature’s time and taxpayers’ money.

“The lawsuits challenging this proposal on constitutional grounds are no doubt ready to file,” said Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen. “If the governor signs this bill into law, those lawsuits will be filed as quickly as the ink dries.”