The Washington Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the state’s ban on the sale of gun ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
The law, passed in 2022, faced a challenge from a Kelso gun shop that argued the ban on selling the magazines violates the state constitution, which protects “the right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state.”
Gator’s Custom Guns also said the law ran afoul of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
In a 7-2 ruling, state Supreme Court justices disagreed.
They ruled that high-capacity magazines aren’t “arms,” but just a component of a gun, and are not generally used for self-defense. The ruling tracked with arguments attorneys for the state made before the court in January.
“By restricting only magazines of a capacity greater than 10, the statute effectively regulates the maximum capacity of magazines, leaving the weapon fully functional for its intended purpose,” Justice Charles Johnson wrote in Thursday’s opinion. “Indeed, we can safely say that individuals are still able to exercise the core right to bear arms when they are limited to purchasing magazines with a capacity of 10 or fewer.”
Justices Sheryl Gordon McCloud and G. Helen Whitener dissented.
Attorneys for Gator’s Custom Guns, including former Republican attorney general candidate Pete Serrano, had argued that the popularity of high-capacity magazines inherently proved they abide by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling protecting firearms that are “in common use” and are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.”
In the dissent, Gordon McCloud sided with this argument, writing that millions of people have chosen semiautomatic firearms with high-capacity magazines “as the primary tool for lawful purposes.”
“It necessarily follows that the Second Amendment protects the arms-bearing conduct at issue here,” she wrote.
Attorney General Nick Brown said the majority decision “is right on the law and will save lives.”
“Large capacity magazines are used in the overwhelming majority of mass shootings, and reducing the toll of these senseless killings is vitally important,” he continued in a social media post.
Serrano said in an interview Thursday that the ruling was “what we anticipated,” but he was glad to see two justices disagreeing with the majority.
Gator’s Guns will seek direct review by the U.S. Supreme Court, he said.
“We’re ready to take this to the next level,” Serrano said. “We believe the Second Amendment analysis in this ruling will be a draw for review by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Legalese
The case was poised to be a test of a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that moved the goalposts when it comes to assessing the constitutionality of gun regulations.
Washington’s ban on high-capacity magazine sales took effect about two and a half years ago. The state is among at least 14 nationwide with similar restrictions. These laws have attracted lawsuits as lower courts grapple with the decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled state firearm laws must stay true to the nation’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Judges have now had to deduce how laws written over a century ago would square with technological advances, like high-capacity magazines and semi-automatic weapons.
In this case, attorneys for the gun shop argued justices have no historical analogue to compare with Washington’s high-capacity magazine law.
But the state attorney general’s office, led by Solicitor General Noah Purcell, countered that the comparison need not be so specific, pointing to Bowie knives banned after they rose in popularity in the 1800s.
The U.S. Supreme Court has since clarified its decision in Bruen to note judges can use general principles, not just exact matches, when comparing modern gun laws to historical regulations.
Johnson didn’t touch on the Bruen test in his ruling, given the majority found the ammunition magazines aren’t firearms in the first place.
Joseph Blocher, the co-founder of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, noted that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a high-capacity magazine ban in California on similar grounds, though the federal court found the prohibition also “falls within the Nation’s tradition of protecting innocent persons by prohibiting especially dangerous uses of weapons and by regulating components necessary to the firing of a firearm.”
In the dissent, Gordon McCloud argues that the laws the state cited as comparison points “regulate carrying, rather than banning a common arm completely.” And others are from the 20th century, later than what the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated is part of the “historical tradition.”
Gordon McCloud also writes that the state’s argument on this issue “is the sort of interest-balancing that repressive governments have historically used to suppress opposition.” In a footnote, she cites laws restricting enslaved people and Native Americans from owning guns in the United States, as well as Nazis seizing guns from Jews in the 1930s.
The ruling comes about four months after attorneys from both sides argued before the justices about the law’s standing under the U.S. and state constitutions.
The case came to the state Supreme Court after a Cowlitz County Superior Court judge struck down the ban in April 2024. The judge, Gary Bashor, ruled the law violated the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms for self-defense granted in the state constitution. He cited the Bruen decision’s historical tradition test as justification for overturning modern firearm laws.
That ruling had been paused until the case was resolved, so the ban had remained in effect. The Washington law still allows people to own high-capacity magazines, but bans importing or selling them.
The case now returns to Cowlitz County Superior Court to decide if Gator’s violated state law in allegedly flouting the prohibition.
This year, Washington lawmakers passed another controversial gun control measure to force firearm buyers to get a state permit before purchasing a gun. Republicans uniformly opposed the bill, with some arguing judges would deem it unconstitutional under Bruen.
That legislation awaits Gov. Bob Ferguson’s signature.
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