NPI’s friends at the Alliance for Gun Respon­si­bil­i­ty announced today they intend to spear­head a mea­sure for the Novem­ber 2018 bal­lot that would restrict civil­ian access to mil­i­tary grade weapons in Wash­ing­ton State, also known as assault rifles.

Stu­dents across Wash­ing­ton and the Unit­ed States walked out of class ear­li­er today to protest the coun­try’s fail­ure to pro­tect its peo­ple by imple­ment­ing laws that would reduce gun vio­lence. April 20th was cho­sen for a day of action in part because it is the nine­teenth anniver­sary of the hor­ror at Columbine.

“Gun vio­lence is an avoid­able epi­dem­ic and is far too com­mon in our coun­try and state. Too many peo­ple have lost their lives to vio­lence; too many fam­i­lies, chil­dren, and com­mu­ni­ties are rat­tled to the core. The peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton — from the kids march­ing for their lives, to their par­ents and grand­par­ents who are call­ing their elect­ed offi­cials – demand action NOW,” said Renée Hop­kins, CEO of the Alliance for Gun Respon­si­bil­i­ty, in a state­ment dis­trib­uted to the press.

“We’re answer­ing their call with a com­pre­hen­sive bal­lot ini­tia­tive to help ensure safer schools and neigh­bor­hoods and through exten­sive work with vot­ers ahead of November’s elec­tion. We must elect more gun respon­si­bil­i­ty cham­pi­ons and do what­ev­er we can to strength­en our gun vio­lence pre­ven­tion laws.”

“My son Will attend­ed the house par­ty that trag­i­cal­ly turned into a mass shoot­ing. I’m so thank­ful every day that he man­aged to get out alive. Three oth­er stu­dents were not so lucky,” said Paul Kramer, Muk­il­teo res­i­dent and cit­i­zen spon­sor of the Reduce Assault Weapon Vio­lence Initiative.

“We need com­pre­hen­sive reform when it comes to assault weapons. Teens should not be able to pos­sess these dan­ger­ous weapons. We’ve seen what can hap­pen when they do. We can’t let that hap­pen again.”

The forth­com­ing ini­tia­tive would, as described by the Alliance, do the following:

• Raise the min­i­mum pur­chase age to 21 for all semi-auto­mat­ic weapons.
  • In Wash­ing­ton, it is cur­rent­ly eas­i­er to buy an assault weapon than it is to pur­chase a hand­gun because assault weapons are treat­ed the same as hunt­ing rifles. This must change.
• Cre­ate an Enhanced Back­ground Check at the time of pur­chase including:
  • A local law enforce­ment check iden­ti­cal to the one we cur­rent­ly require for handguns.
  • Requir­ing the pur­chas­er show that they have com­plet­ed a safe­ty train­ing course with­in the last five years that includes basic safe­ty and safe stor­age rules, safe han­dling, and an overview of state and fed­er­al firearms laws.
• Dan­ger­ous Access Prevention.
  • Holds gun own­ers respon­si­ble if a child or oth­er pro­hib­it­ed per­son access­es and uses an unsafe­ly stored firearm to harm them­selves or anoth­er person.
• Ensure con­tin­ued eli­gi­bil­i­ty to pos­sess or pur­chase an assault weapon.
  • Requires the Wash­ing­ton Depart­ment of Licens­ing (DOL) and the appro­pri­ate law enforce­ment agen­cies to work togeth­er to devel­op a process to ensure that pur­chasers con­tin­ue to be eli­gi­ble to pos­sess a firearm.
• Require informed con­sent at the point of pur­chase about the inher­ent risks asso­ci­at­ed with the pres­ence of a firearm in the home. 
  • Requires the noti­fi­ca­tion at the point of sale that own­ing a firearm increas­es one’s risk for injury, death by sui­cide, domes­tic vio­lence and homicide.
• Estab­lish a wait­ing peri­od up to 10 days for the pur­chase of an assault weapon.

While the mea­sure does not ban the sale of mil­i­tary grade weapons, restrict­ing their pur­chase to per­sons age twen­ty-one or high­er and requir­ing a wait­ing peri­od would be an improve­ment over the sta­tus quo. We can expect that the NRA and oth­er gun enthu­si­ast groups will fierce­ly oppose this mea­sure, but we over­came their oppo­si­tion to pass I‑594 in 2014 and I‑1491 in 2016.

The fil­ing has not yet appeared on the Sec­re­tary of State’s web­site, but we imag­ine the text will be avail­able soon. The next step will be for the mea­sure to be assigned a num­ber, then a bal­lot title. After any bal­lot title chal­lenges are resolved, sig­na­ture gath­er­ing can begin. The Alliance will have about eight to nine weeks to qual­i­fy the mea­sure for the Novem­ber 2018 bal­lot. About 350,000 sig­na­tures will need­ed to make the mea­sure eli­gi­ble for a ran­dom sam­ple check. (259,622 valid sig­na­tures are required, and a cush­ion of 25% is rec­om­mend­ed to ensure qualification).

This year, the sig­na­ture dead­line is the close of busi­ness on July 6th.