Poorly written, it will hurt Scouts

Published 12:36 pm Saturday, September 27, 2014

In all my years of living in this state, I’ve never felt so strongly about a good idea gone bad as I do about I-594. This is an example of an initiative that was written to confuse people and make it extremely difficult to follow/enforce.

A lot of side effects will hit our state if this is passed. Two of these side effects are very important to me. The biggest gotcha is this will make it difficult, if not impossible, for the Boy Scouts and other similar organizations to offer rifle and shotgun classes during summer camp. Sure, if a child’s parent is there and they have gone through a background check of their own they can “loan” a firearm to their child. But most won’t have that opportunity. This will result in more troops going outside of the state for summer camps, and camps within Washington shutting down due to low turnout.

Another side-affect that will impact everyone is that this initiative will make purchasing a firearm so difficult that many people will go to our neighboring states to purchase their next rifle. So, before you say “so what,” a key piece of information is that these purchases are highly taxed in this state. That money goes to Fish and Wildlife which then use that to maintain our wildlife areas and programs. This includes the wolf recovery efforts.

The only way to get a worthwhile background check law will be to make personal information, such as mental history from a doctor and records from other states available.

Lyle Rice

Mukilteo