Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a trio of bills into law Wednesday morning that restrict firearms, including a new limit on the amount of ammunition in magazines and prohibition on open carry of weapons at city meetings.
The two other pieces of legislation are intended to limit weapons at government meetings and election spaces, and to further tighten prohibitions on the assembly of untraceable “ghost” guns.
Taken together, the bills are some of the strongest gun regulations to be passed by the Legislature. Washington voters in the past decade have three times approved stricter gun laws at the ballot box, after proposals died in Olympia.
Inslee signed the bills in a ceremony Wednesday, surrounded by firearms-safety advocates, including people who have seen friends and family killed or injured from gun violence, as well as lawmakers and state Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
“The NRA’s stranglehold on this state has been broken,” Inslee said in remarks to reporters after the ceremony. “And the reason is because of the courage of the parents, and the courage of legislators, too …”
Still, the fight over the new regulations is likely not over.
Senate Bill 5078 — which prohibits the distribution, sale, importation and manufacture of firearm magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition — is expected to draw a legal challenge. The new law does not prohibit possession of such magazines, meaning existing magazines.
In an email Wednesday morning, Alan Gottlieb of the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation, whose organization files legal challenges to firearms regulations across the nation, wrote that they intended to sue.
“The Second Amendment Foundation will definitely file a lawsuit against the magazine ban,” wrote Gottlieb, a founder of the organization. “Our attorneys are reviewing the other two bills.”
Opponents of stricter firearms regulations have often argued that such laws infringe upon the constitutional right to bear arms, and won’t be effective in stopping gun violence.
The National Rifle Association Wednesday morning didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Inslee also signed House Bill 1630, which bans the open carry of weapons while knowingly being in a local government building used for meetings like city council gatherings.
That new law also bans the possession and carrying of weapons in parts of facilities used for school district board meetings, as well as in elections offices, such as a county auditor.
It comes after lawmakers last year passed a law to ban open-carry of weapons at the Capitol in Olympia and at permitted demonstrations around the state.
A third bill signed into law Wednesday further restricts the sale, purchase, possession and transfer of untraceable firearms, or parts of them. House Bill 1705 also sets standards for licensed firearms dealers to put markings such as serial numbers on firearms components or a complete gun that doesn’t have such markings.
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