Editorial: If lawmakers won’t adopt gun safety bills, put them to voters

By The Herald Editorial Board

The passage of firearms-related initiatives — the universal background check, I-594, in 2014 and extreme risk protection orders, I-1491, last fall — demonstrates the level of popular support in Washington state for reasonable gun safety measures.

That should give lawmakers confidence this session to adopt firearms-related legislation that has been proposed by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and lawmakers, including Rep. Ruth Kagi, D-Shoreline.

Kagi is again proposing safe-storage legislation that would establish penalties for those who leave firearms where children and others barred from using firearms can get control of them. Allowing access to an unsecured firearm by a child or other prohibited person would be considered a class C felony if the firearm is discharged and causes injury or death, and a gross misdemeanor if the gun is discharged without injury, is used in a crime or displayed in public or in a threatening manner.

Frustrated previously when the legislation did not become law, Kagi has increased the stakes this year with the provision for a class C felony. Prior legislation considered violations only as misdemeanors.

Safe storage of firearms isn’t controversial and doesn’t require anything more than gun safety experts, including the National Rifle Association recommend.

The NRA, on its NRA Family website, says that parents simply telling children not to touch may no longer be a tactic that works for families today. Safe storage, the NRA website states, “must provide an adequate level of protection to prevent unauthorized persons from accessing the firearms.” But determining what protection is adequate, it says, is a judgment to be left to gun owners.

Kagi’s bill respects that and calls for a range of safe storage options, be it a locked box, gun safe or other locked storage space or a device, such as a trigger lock, that prevents the firearm from being discharged.

Ferguson, in September, announced that he would draft legislation that would ban the sale of assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. His announcement came just weeks after a 19-year-old Kamiak High School graduate, Allen Ivanov, purchased a AR-15-style semiautomatic weapon, went to a party in Mukilteo and killed three fellow Kamiak graduates and wounded a fourth. Ivanov pleaded guilty in December and faces a mandatory life sentence in prison.

“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 at a September news conference announcing the legislation. “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 main legislation would bar the sale of assault-style weapons, semi-automatic rifles with a detachable magazine and a pistol grip, and would also ban the sale of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition as well as semiautomatic pistols that hold more than 10 rounds. Such weapons already in the possession of gun owners would remain legal but could not be sold to others.

Ferguson’s bill also would require owners of such weapons to safely secure them with locks.

As important as the ban on the sale of the weapons themselves is the ban on the high-capacity magazines.

A 2004 study of the national assault weapons ban that Congress passed in 1994 but expired in 2004 showed mixed results for its effectiveness, partly because it didn’t address high-capacity magazines. There was some reduction in crime, but reductions were offset by the increased use in the 1990s of firearms of all types with high-capacity magazines.

Recognizing the opposition gun safety measures experience in the Legislature, Ferguson has added a backup bill that would allow the sale of such semi-automatic weapons but would require a license, an additional background check and subject the sale to a 10-day waiting period.

Again, this shouldn’t be controversial as it would simply place these weapons under the requirements that already exist for hand guns.

At the minimum, the Legislature this session should adopt requirements for assault-style semi-automatic weapons that already apply to other firearms. But if it refuses to adopt Ferguson’s ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines and again turns away Kagi’s safe-storage bill, gun safety advocates who successfully passed I-594 and I-1491 should work to put both measures before the voters.