VICTORY! Assault weapons ban clears Legislature, heads to Governor Inslee’s desk

Wash­ing­ton will soon become the tenth state in the nation to ban mil­i­tary-grade assault weapons, in a water­shed, crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant vic­to­ry for gun safety.

Today, the state House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Sen­ate came to an agree­ment on mutu­al­ly accept­able final lan­guage for House Bill 1240, which pro­hibits the man­u­fac­ture, impor­ta­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, sell­ing, and offer­ing for sale of assault weapons. The bill now heads to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee for signature.

Request­ed by Inslee and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, the bill was prime spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Strom Peter­son (D‑21st Dis­trict: Sno­homish Coun­ty). Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er (D‑48th Dis­trict: Belle­vue, Red­mond, Kirk­land, the Points com­mu­ni­ties) spon­sored the Sen­ate com­pan­ion, SB 5265.

Twice in the past twelve months, NPI’s research has found a major­i­ty strong­ly sup­port­ive of ban­ning assault weapons: 56% last June and 58% this March. We unveiled the first of those find­ings at a press con­fer­ence with Fer­gu­son, Kud­er­er, State Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jami­la Tay­lor, and Emi­ly Cantrell of the Alliance for Gun Respon­si­bil­i­ty. Weeks lat­er, our research was cor­rob­o­rat­ed by Sur­veyUSA and its part­ners in a dif­fer­ent statewide sur­vey.

“Weapons designed to be used on a mil­i­tary field shouldn’t have a place on the streets of Wash­ing­ton,” said Zach Elmore, a vol­un­teer with the Wash­ing­ton chap­ter of Moms Demand Action, which has been lob­by­ing for the bill.

“Assault weapons are fre­quent­ly used in mass shoot­ings and research shows that lim­it­ing access to these firearms could reduce mass shoot­ing deaths. We are proud to stand with our gun sense cham­pi­ons in the Leg­is­la­ture, and thank our lead­ers for tak­ing swift action and send­ing this bill to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s desk.”

“Each round fired from an assault weapon can have up to four times greater muz­zle ener­gy than a bul­let fired from a hand­gun,” not­ed a state­ment from Every­town For Gun Safe­ty about the neces­si­ty of HB 1240. “Each round can inflict greater dam­age to the human body than a round from a typ­i­cal hand­gun — and these guns can fire many of these high-pow­ered rounds extreme­ly fast. Pro­hibit­ing the man­u­fac­ture and sale of assault weapons in the state is an impor­tant first step to elim­i­nat­ing the sup­ply of these excep­tion­al­ly dead­ly firearms.

At the behest of the gun lob­by, Repub­li­cans vocif­er­ous­ly opposed HB 1240 at every step of the leg­isla­tive process, offer­ing all sorts of tired and ridicu­lous argu­ments. (Our favorite is the absurd claim that crim­i­nals won’t fol­low the law, so it’s not worth pass­ing. Why have any laws at all, then?)

It was up to Democ­rats to get the job done. They deliv­ered, with majori­ties in both cham­bers stand­ing up to the NRA and its local sycophants.

The final vote in the Sen­ate was as follows:

Roll Call
HB 1240
Firearms/assault weapons
3rd Read­ing & Final Pas­sage as Amend­ed by the Senate
4/18/2023

Yeas: 28; Nays: 21

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Cleve­land, Con­way, Dhin­gra, Frame, Hasegawa, Hunt, Kauff­man, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, Lovick, Mul­let, Nguyen, Nobles, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Robin­son, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Shew­make, Stan­ford, Trudeau, Valdez, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Boehnke, Braun, Dozi­er, For­tu­na­to, Gildon, Hawkins, Holy, King, MacEwen, McCune, Muz­za­ll, Pad­den, Rivers, Schoesler, Short, Tor­res, Van De Wege, Wag­oner, War­nick, Wil­son (Jeff), Wil­son (Lyn­da)

Sen­a­tor Kevin Van De Wege was the only “nay” vote on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side.

The final vote in the House was as follows:

Roll Call
HB 1240
Firearms/assault weapons
Final Pas­sage as Amend­ed by the Senate
4/19/2023

Yeas: 56; Nays: 42

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Alvara­do, Bate­man, Berg, Bergquist, Berry, Bronoske, Callan, Chap­man, Chopp, Cortes, Davis, Doglio, Don­aghy, Duerr, Enten­man, Fari­var, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Fos­se, Good­man, Gregerson, Hack­ney, Hansen, Klo­ba, Leav­itt, Lekanoff, Macri, Mena, Mor­gan, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Peter­son, Pol­let, Ramel, Ramos, Reed, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Ryu, San­tos, Senn, Sim­mons, Slat­ter, Springer, Stearns, Stonier, Street, Tay­lor, Thai, Tharinger, Tim­mons, Walen, Wylie, Jinkins

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Abbarno, Barkis, Barnard, Caldier, Cham­bers, Chan­dler, Cheney, Chris­t­ian, Con­nors, Cor­ry, Cou­ture, Dent, Dye, Eslick, Goehn­er, Gra­ham, Grif­fey, Har­ris, Hutchins, Jacob­sen, Klick­er, Kretz, Low, May­cum­ber, McClin­tock, McEn­tire, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Robert­son, Rude, Rule, San­dlin, Schmick, Schmidt, Shavers, Steele, Stokes­bary, Volz, Walsh, Waters, Wilcox, Ybarra

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Clyde Shavers and Ali­cia Rule, both front­line mem­bers fac­ing tough reelec­tion fights, were the only “nay” votes on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side. Their seat­mates Dave Paul and Joe Tim­mons decid­ed to vote for the legislation.

Wash­ing­ton cur­rent­ly ranks tenth in terms of the strength of its gun safe­ty laws, accord­ing to Every­town For Gun Safe­ty, behind Ore­gon, Mary­land, Illi­nois, Mass­a­chu­setts, Con­necti­cut, New Jer­sey, Hawaii, New York, and Cal­i­for­nia — all Demo­c­ra­t­ic-run states. The suc­cess of HB 1240 and oth­er gun safe­ty bills adopt­ed this ses­sion could pro­pel Wash­ing­ton up in the rankings.

Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon’s neigh­bor Ida­ho is con­sid­ered a “nation­al fail­ure” and ranked forty-eighth out of fifty, with only Arkansas and Mis­sis­sip­pi far­ing worse.

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden usu­al­ly offers a state­ment of con­grat­u­la­tions through his com­mu­ni­ca­tions office when a state acts to ban assault weapons — we’ll see if the White House offers a com­ment on the pas­sage of HB 1240.

We thank the Alliance for Gun Respon­si­bil­i­ty, Every­town, Moms Demand Action, Brady, and every­one who worked to get HB 1240 across the fin­ish line. Repub­li­cans and gun wor­ship­pers can threat­en and file all the law­suits they want. Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son is ready for them. It’s not pos­si­ble to know what the future holds, but we do at least know that HB 1240 will be well defended.

Gun vio­lence is pre­ventable, and we must have the courage to stand up to the gun lob­by. Our lead­er­ship on gun safe­ty can save lives and pro­tect communities.