By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
A trio of Washington State House Democrats has filed a bill to limit state residents to one-gun-per-month purchases.
House Bill 2054 would add a new section to state firearms law which states bluntly in the first sentence: “A dealer may not deliver more than one firearm to a purchaser or transferee within any 30-day period.”
The bill is sponsored by Reps. Joe Fitzgibbon, Darya Farivar, and Timm Ormsby. The measure is one of the things on this year’s legislative wish list published by the billionaire-backed, Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility.
“RESTRICTING BULK FIREARM PURCHASES: Limiting the number of firearms an individual can purchase at a given time is a straightforward approach to prevent gun trafficking. Data shows that multiple firearms sales are a significant indicator of firearms trafficking, and firearms sold in such sales are frequently recovered at crime scenes.”
The Alliance does not reveal the source of this data.
Virginia had such a law, passed in the early 1990s, but it was repealed in 2012. At the time, Virginia Public Media (VPM) reported that WCVE News “could only obtain federal firearm trace data back to 2006 but is seeking that data going back to 1993 when the law went into effect. The data we have shows little difference in the number of Virginia guns that were recovered in other states prior to and after the law was repealed in 2012. However, there was a jump in the number of Virginia guns recovered around 2016.”
The Virginia restriction was reenacted in 2020, after Democrats took control of the Virginia legislature.
Evergreen State Second Amendment activists are already promising to fight passage of the bill, but with Democrats in firm control of the state legislature in Olympia, that may be a tough goal to reach. Democrats are behind every gun control bill in the legislature.
This year there is also a bill that would require a permit-to-purchase a firearm, mandating proof of training to include a live fire exercise. Critics say there are not enough gun ranges or range safety officers in the state to accommodate the kind of demand that might arise.
A similar law in Oregon was recently declared unconstitutional by a district court judge.
