The year 2018 was a banner year for state progressives in Washington state. It was the midway point of Governor Jay Inslee’s 12-year reign as progressive commandant of a rapidly changing leftist haven. It was the end of Donald Trump’s second year as President of the United States for his first term; and thus the zenith of progressive legal challenges by Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
Thrown into that mix were the powder keg of a school shooting in the small town of Rockford, just 30 minutes south of Spokane, in September of 2017, and one of the more nationally hyped stories of the Parkland, Florida shooting in early 2018.
Seizing upon those crises and with a groundswell of public approval, Inslee and co. enacted one of the boldest strategies to date concerning gun rights and challenging the longitude of the second amendment. For the 2018 election cycle, an initiative was placed on the ballot supported by the vast majority of the state legislature, the governor and AG’s office: Initiative 1639.
This newly proposed initiative would remove the rights of thousands of Washingtonians, aged 18-21, from owning and possession a semi-automatic rifle, put others over the age of 21 under stricter and more onerous background checks to own such a rifle, imposed waiting periods on those who passed all of those requirements, demanded new and more stringent policies for storage of guns on gun sellers, and implemented criminal penalties upon those who did not comply.
More than that, the vague language defining words like “rifle” and “assault weapon” expanded the scope of the law beyond the convenient target of AR-15’s to include things like long-barrel pistols, semi-automatic shotguns, and a host of other perfectly legal weapons available across the nation.
It quickly became known in the region as the most egregious and aggressive attack on the second amendment rights of United States citizens. And it passed. Running away. A staggering 60% of Washingtonians—perhaps swayed by recent tragedies like Parkland, convinced by emotional rhetoric, or fully indoctrinated with the belief that guns cause violence rather than being tools used by evil people—gave their consent to strip law-abiding citizens of their rights as freemen.
And with that consent, the progressive wing of Washington’s legislature has not stopped pushing the envelope. Seeing 2018’s election win as a mandate from the people, the congress in Olympia has only become more brazen and bold in taking more and more ground.
From 2019-2022, the progressives’ assault on gun rights did not stop or even slow down. Chipping away at these rights in 2019, 2020, and 2021, the Washington legislature brought down a hammer in 2022, passing three bills through to the Governor’s desk that: 1. banned magazines carrying more than 10 rounds; 2. illegalized “ghost guns”, aka anything self made, having unregulated parts, or not possessing a serial number; and 3. banned firearms from election-related places as well as school board and municipal meetings.
“If democrats that are in charge of our legislature were objective, and actually wanted to solve these problems, they would put a sunset clause in every single one of these bills.” - Jeremy Ball, owner of Sharp Shooting Indoor Gun Range and Gun Store.
While these waves of legislation mounted, 2023 saw the curbing of personal rights reach a new crescendo. Inslee signed into law a comprehensive semi-automatic “assault rifle” ban that utterly halted the sale and transfer of most semi-automatic guns over 30 inches in length, as well as a mandatory training requirement to purchase any gun in the state.
“I don’t know,” said Jeremy Ball, owner of Sharp Shooting Indoor Range and Gun Shop, when asked about the possible goal of this massive movement to restrict gun rights in the state. “You have people who are emotional about this issue that (the goal) is to ban guns. And it’s possible that that’s it. But I’m not sure that does it.”
Pointing to things like the suicide rate in Washington state – which is a tool of legislators and the money funding their opposition to gun rights to propel ever encroaching laws forward – Ball added that if the suicide rates stayed the same after it was all said and done, and guns were hypothetically banned throughout the state, there would likely be no repealing of these laws.
“What are we trying to accomplish? You can say reduce violence until you’re blue in the face, but there’s no definition…”
That definition refers to having a clear, measurable objective for what successful curbing of violence means. You could target suicide or homicide rates, Ball offered, and set a reasonable goal for reducing them over time.
“Another challenge I see with this is: too much too quick. We haven’t proven that anything works. We don’t have any data. Let’s see if any of these (laws) work. If democrats that are in charge of our legislature were objective, and actually wanted to solve these problems, they would put a sunset clause in every single one of these bills. Because they would say, we will renew this if the data proves that it was the right thing to do. They won’t do that.”
The objective, rather, seems clearly to be to keep pushing until there’s nothing left to take. It has been stunning for Ball, who has lived in Washington state for decades, to see one of the freest states in America regarding gun rights become the most restricted almost overnight.
“Because of the mentality of the average voter that we’ll just fight these things in court,” Austin Johnson, a former Sharp Shooting employee and also a host of the Mid-Tier Thoughts podcast, cautioned, “People fail to realize (the way these things work).”
Stuck mentally waiting for legal challenges that are years down the line from even getting a hearing, Washingtonians, run the risk of seeing the last protections of their gun rights ebb away, with the very store owners and federally licensed gun sellers in the crosshairs of state congressmen.
The third bill brought forward in the legislature in 2023 that subsequently passed across the Governor’s desk for signature, put sellers squarely in its sights. This law and the ones that came after it in 2024, and now under review in 2025, reveal the changing tactics of Washington’s governing bodies.
They are attacking what Ball calls the last wall of gun rights in Washington state, and it is a wall that is very close to crumbling.
What about the federal government? While Johnson’s words ring true about the need for citizen action and addressing the legislature directly, the courts could soon be inundated with legal challenges springing from President Trump’s most recent executive order on February 7. That order makes it clear that the attorney general and federal agencies like the ATF will be reviewing other agencies or executive governments (which could very well refer to state executive branches, a la governors and state AG’s) to determine if their laws or mandates infringe on the constitutional decrees of the second amendment.
There is still plenty of fight to be had.
***This is Part 2 of a full-spectrum review of Washington’s assault on gun rights. Click here for Part 1. And stay tuned for part 3 which will dive deeply into the current war on FFL’s in Washington state.***
