Attorney General Bob Ferguson proposes legislation to ban sale of assault weapons

Vow­ing to pro­tect lives and strength­en the state’s many diverse com­mu­ni­ties, Wash­ing­ton’s chief legal offi­cer announced today he will be propos­ing leg­is­la­tion to ban the sale of assault weapon­ry — in oth­er words, guns designed for the sole pur­pose of killing large num­bers of human beings.

The agency request leg­is­la­tion, which already has the sup­port of law­mak­ers like Sen­a­tors David Frockt and Kevin Ranker, will have two key provisions:

• A ban on semi­au­to­mat­ic weapons with mil­i­tary-style fea­tures that ren­der them more eas­i­ly con­ceal­able or more dead­ly; and
• A lim­it on mag­a­zine capac­i­ty — cur­rent­ly unlim­it­ed under Wash­ing­ton law — to a max­i­mum of 10 rounds of ammunition.

“The recent tragedy in Muk­il­teo dri­ves home the need to act with urgency to end the avail­abil­i­ty of weapons designed with only one pur­pose — to kill peo­ple,” Fer­gu­son said in a state­ment. “I have a duty to pro­tect the pub­lic, as well as uphold the Con­sti­tu­tion. My pro­pos­al will ban some of the dead­liest weapons, while respect­ing the Sec­ond Amend­ment right to bear arms.”

Fer­gu­son’s office is still work­ing on the spe­cif­ic word­ing of the leg­is­la­tion, and an ini­tial bill draft is expect­ed to be com­plet­ed by some­time in December.

NPI strong­ly believes that mil­i­tary grade weapons have no place in our com­mu­ni­ties or on our streets, and we applaud AG Fer­gu­son for step­ping for­ward to pro­pose this leg­is­la­tion and for com­mit­ting to advo­cat­ing for it until it becomes law.

Hard­ware designed for mil­i­tary use should not be sold or be avail­able to civil­ians, peri­od, and that includes AR-15 style semi­au­to­mat­ic long guns. Respon­si­ble gun enthu­si­asts under­stand that such weapons have no legit­i­mate pur­pose oth­er than killing large num­bers of humans. They are not need­ed for hunt­ing or self-defense. There’s no rea­son they should be avail­able to civilians.

Sad­ly, extrem­ist out­fits like the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion are opposed to gun sense mea­sures like what Fer­gu­son is propos­ing because they wrong­ly believe that our coun­try should be as weaponized and trig­ger-hap­py as pos­si­ble. They have claimed the text of the Sec­ond Amend­ment sup­ports their posi­tion, but it does not.

From lis­ten­ing to the NRA’s talk­ing heads on TV and radio, you might be led to believe that the lan­guage of the Sec­ond Amend­ment is the following:

The right of the peo­ple to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

But actu­al­ly, it is this:

A well reg­u­lat­ed mili­tia being nec­es­sary to the secu­ri­ty of a free state, the right of the peo­ple to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

If you look at all the drafts of the Sec­ond Amend­ment — which James Madi­son was pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for — you’ll see the words “well reg­u­lat­ed mili­tia” over and over again. It was an essen­tial ele­ment in all the drafts.

We agree with Jus­tice John Paul Stevens: a prop­er inter­pre­ta­tion of the Sec­ond Amend­ment takes into account its first thir­teen words:

When each word in the text is giv­en full effect, the Amend­ment is most nat­u­ral­ly read to secure to the peo­ple a right to use and pos­sess arms in con­junc­tion with ser­vice in a well-reg­u­lat­ed mili­tia. So far as appears, no more than that was con­tem­plat­ed by its drafters or is encom­passed with­in its terms. Even if the mean­ing of the text were gen­uine­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to more than one inter­pre­ta­tion, the bur­den would remain on those advo­cat­ing a depar­ture from the pur­pose iden­ti­fied in the pre­am­ble and from set­tled law to come for­ward with per­sua­sive new argu­ments or evidence.

Those who claim the lan­guage of the Sec­ond Amend­ment bars the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment or any state gov­ern­ment from pass­ing gun safe­ty laws are wrong: it does not. Guns mak­ing tak­ing a life easy, even from a dis­tance. Life, lib­er­ty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness can all be snuffed out with a sin­gle shot.

It is there­fore imper­a­tive that we as a soci­ety insist and demand that any civil­ian who wish­es to buy firearms pass a back­ground check, under­stand how to secure their weapon, and be pro­hib­it­ed from own­ing weapons designed for mil­i­tary use.

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Fer­gu­son’s leg­is­la­tion only lim­its mag­a­zine capac­i­ty and bans the sale of dead­ly assault weapons in our state. It does­n’t require those who own such weapons already to reg­is­ter them, or give them up.

Nev­er­the­less, Fer­gu­son’s bill will make our com­mu­ni­ties much safer than they are today. We strong­ly sup­port the leg­is­la­tion and will lob­by for its passage.

POSTSCRIPT: KING5 has visu­als from Fer­gu­son’s press con­fer­ence.