By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The Washington State Department of Licensing on Friday reported a staggering increase in the number concealed pistol licenses—more than 21,000 over the number announced at the end of August.
It’s a new record for the number of licenses issued in a single month in the Evergreen State.
This brings the total of active CPLs in Washington to 688,440, a remarkable total in a state where voters have adopted two restrictive gun control initiatives since 2014, and the Democrat-controlled Legislature passed a ban on so-called “large capacity” ammunition magazines which took effect July 1. That ban is already being challenged in federal court. At the end of August, there were 667,260 active licenses, so the number of new licenses was 21,180.
Advised of the spike, Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and who was in Dallas Friday hosting the 37th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, had a one-word reaction: “Wow!”
By no surprise, King County—the state’s most populous county encompassing Seattle—reported the largest number of CPLs, at 107,846. This number includes 83,926 licenses held by men and 23,760 by women. Seattle is on track to meet or exceed the 52 homicides posted in 2020.
In neighboring Pierce County, encompassing Tacoma where violent crime, including homicide, is surging, there are now 90,395 active CPLs. The number includes 64,677 held by men and 25,540 by women. This is a hike of 5,730 licenses from last month.
By comparison, at the end of August, the Licensing agency reported 105,091 active CPLs in King County and 84,665 in Pierce.
At the beginning of this year, Washington reported 639,298 active licenses, which was no small total. For the nine months of 2022, the Evergreen State has added 49,142 more CPLs, which appears to be a reaction to crime in the state’s most populous—and predominantly Democrat/liberal—counties.
According to a recent report at Ammoland, the previous record for a single month spike was set in April 2013, when 13,932 CPLs were issued. For August of this year, the Licensing Department reported a hike of 13,293, falling just short of the record. Now, both totals have been eclipsed, a fact which cannot be good news to the Seattle-based gun prohibition lobby.
If the pattern continues, Washington could well see the number of active licenses to top 700,000 before the end of the year.
