The good news out of Olympia just keeps on coming.
By a vote of twenty-nine to twenty, the Washington State Senate tonight voted to ban bump stocks, the now-infamous devices that were used in the horrific Las Vegas massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in American history.
Four Republicans crossed party lines to join all twenty-five Democrats in support of ESB 5992: Joe Fain, Mark Miloscia, Curtis King, and Hans Zeiger.
The full roll call was as follows:
ESB 5992
Trigger modification devices
Senate vote on 3rd Reading & Final Passage
1/25/2018Yeas: 29; Nays: 20
Voting Yea: Senator Billig, Carlyle, Chase, Cleveland, Conway, Darneille, Dhingra, Fain, Frockt, Hasegawa, Hobbs, Hunt, Keiser, King, Kuderer, Liias, McCoy, Miloscia, Mullet, Nelson, Palumbo, Pedersen, Ranker, Rolfes, Saldaña, Takko, Van De Wege, Wellman, Zeiger
Voting Nay: Senator Angel, Bailey, Baumgartner, Becker, Braun, Brown, Ericksen, Fortunato, Hawkins, Honeyford, O’Ban, Padden, Rivers, Schoesler, Sheldon, Short, Wagoner, Walsh, Warnick, Wilson
NPI congratulates the Senate on once again mustering a constitutional majority to pass an important bill that will save lives and strengthen our communities.
The Senate is truly on a roll. During the past two weeks, the chamber has voted to expose dark money in politics, pass the capital budget that didn’t get a vote last year, approve same-day voter registration, ban LGBT “conversion therapy”, give a thumbs up to Breakfast After the Bell, extend a helping hand to DREAMers, and protect transgender students from bullying. And Senate Majority Leader Sharon Nelson (D‑34th District: Seattle) says there’s more to come… much more.
It is wonderful to see so many good bills finally getting votes on the Senate floor after years of obstruction and delay. The Senate’s Democratic majority seems to have found their groove. They’re now rescuing and passing out bills that had been stuck in the Republicans’ graveyard of progress on a near-daily basis.
Sharon Nelson and her leadership team are to be commended for ensuring that the people’s business gets done — and in a timely fashion. With the cooperation of the House and Governor Inslee, they have a chance to really move our state forward this session. We in Washington State are in a position to take a much more responsible and inclusive path than the country as a whole. And we must.
Our kids will be safer with this passed!
If you think this will stop shootings in no gun zones you are out of your mind.
There are only two things that will stop shootings in no gun zones.
Eliminate the no gun zones.
Good guys with guns.
If you think criminals will follow laws like this you only need to look at some of the most gun controlled cities and nations across the globe.
Actually, if we look at cities and countries with strict gun safety laws, Steven (like Australia) what we find is that they don’t have a problem with mass shootings. Gun responsibility laws work. Of course, we won’t be able to simply copy what other countries have done; we need our own solutions. We can start by prohibiting civilians from owning weapons of war like the AR-15 that were designed solely to make the slaughter of other human beings efficient, and devices like bump fire stocks that allow semi-automatic weapons currently being sold to operate like machine guns, which are already prohibited.
The notion that we should not legislate to address this public safety and public health crisis because criminals will not follow the laws we create is an argument for having no laws at all.