In a packed hearing on five gun control bills under consideration by the Washington State Legislature Tuesday, the one certainty was that gun prohibitionists and Second Amendment advocates have far different opinions.
While supporters of all five measures largely based their arguments on emotion, including personal loss, opponents told the House Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee questioned whether some of the bills would pass a constitutional challenge.
Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels, speaking in opposition to House Bill 1902, which would require gun buyers to take a firearm training course and obtain a permit-to-purchase prior to being allowed to buy a firearm, told the committee he had participated in a Jan. 15 march commemorating the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I’d like you to imagine a country or a state in which Dr. King, prior to utilizing and taking advantage of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech would have to get a permit from his government before he goes out and exercises that speech,” Sheriff Nowels testified. “Where Dr. King would have to go to a training class where the government taught him what was appropriate to speak of and what not to speak of before he could go out and demonstrate. House Bill 1902 is doing exactly that for the Second Amendment here in the United States of America.”
Referring to testimony from one of the proponents who mentioned licensing for certain professions, Sheriff Nowels noted that these professions are not constitutionally-protected rights, while keeping and bearing arms is protected.
“House Bill 1902 will accomplish nothing in making our community safer, nothing in making the state safer,” he warned.
According to KING 5 News, Jim Parsons, whose daughter was a victim in the Oct. 1, 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, supported the permit requirement, calling it “common sense gun legislation.”
Dave Workman, speaking on behalf of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, reminded the committee that a similar permit-to-purchase and training requirement had recently been declared unconstitutional in neighboring Oregon. He predicted that if HB 1902 becomes law, it will also be challenged in court.
Later, at the end of the hearing as he testified on House Bill 2054, which would limit firearm purchases to one per month, Workman observed that the bill is “one more example of an attempt to push gun control rather than crime control.”
“Since 2014, when Washington State started passing restrictive gun regulations, the number of homicides in Washington State has doubled,” he stated. “The number of homicides in Seattle has tripled. How long is it going to take to figure out that we are on the wrong track with this kind of legislation?”
In 2014, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report for that year, Washington reported 172 murders statewide and in Seattle, there were 23 slayings, according to Seattle Police Department data. In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, the state tallied 394 murders, and in 2023, Seattle logged a record-breaking 73 murders, according to the watchdog group Seattle Homicide (not connected to the police department).
The pattern continued with remarks supporting and opposing the other three measures, House Bill 1903, House Bill 2118, and House Bill 2021.
For example, NRA representative Aoibheann Cline testified against HB 1903, which would require people to report lost or stolen guns within 24 hours. She called the underlying premise of the bill “fatally flawed.” She said the bill shifts liability for crimes from the criminal to the victim of a gun theft.
“Criminals don’t obey the law,” she observed. “It’s time for Washington to stop penalizing and further tracking law-abiding citizens just for being gun owners.”
Executive sessions may be held later in the week on some of the legislation, but these bills have a long way to go.
