By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The ink hardly had time to dry on House Bill 1240, signed Tuesday by Democrat Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, before gun rights organizations including the Second Amendment Foundation—based in Bellevue, Wash.—filed a federal lawsuit challenging the new law, which took effect immediately.
The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The case is known as Hartford v. Ferguson.
Joining SAF are the Firearms Policy Coalition, Sporting Systems, a Hazel Dell retailer, and three private citizens, Brett Bass, Douglas Mitchell and Lawrence Hartford, the latter for whom the case is named. They are represented by Seattle attorney Joel Ard.
Named as defendants are Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, State Patrol Chief John R. Batiste, Kitsap County Sheriff John Gese and County Prosecutor Chad M. Enright; Kittitas County Sheriff Clayton Myers and County Prosecutor Greg Zempel; Clark County Sheriff John Horch and County Prosecutor Tony Golik, and Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortnoy and County Prosecutor Jason Cummings, all in their official capacities.
Ferguson had joined Inslee in December to call on the Democrat-controlled Legislature to pass the gun ban bill. He has been lobbying lawmakers for the past few years for such a prohibition, which allows current owners of affected guns to keep them. But future sales and manufacturing are prohibited.
“The State has enacted a flat prohibition on the manufacture, sale, import and distribution of many types of firearms, inaccurately labeled as ‘assault weapons,’ which are owned by millions of ordinary citizens across the country,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “In the process, the state has criminalized a common and important means of self-defense, the modern semiautomatic rifle. The state has put politics ahead of constitutional rights, and is penalizing law-abiding citizens while this legislation does nothing to arrest and prosecute criminals who misuse firearms in defiance of all existing gun control laws. It is absurd.”
He noted that SAF already has two legal actions in progress, challenging Washington gun laws. One lawsuit concerns the magazine ban passed last year and the other challenges the ban on sales of semiautomatic rifles to young adults, which was part of Initiative 1639, passed by voters in November 2018.
“The hysteria manufactured by the authors and supporters of this legislation is rivaled only by the false characterization of the banned firearms as ‘weapons of war,’” SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, added in a prepared statement. “As we note in our complaint, the firearms that Washington bans as ‘assault weapons’ are, in all respects, ordinary semiautomatic rifles. To the extent they are different from other semiautomatic rifles, their distinguishing features make them safer and easier to use. But even if they are considered as a separate group of ‘assault weapons,’ they cannot be banned because they are not dangerous and unusual.”
SAF, and its sister organization, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, are currently involved in a federal lawsuit to overturn an “assault weapons” ban in Maryland. That case was granted certiorari last year by the Supreme Court, which then vacated a lower court ruling upholding the ban, and remanded the case back for further action adhering to the guidelines the high court established in the Bruen ruling one week prior.
Another semi-auto ban case is currently underway in California, where a ruling by District Judge Roger Benitez is expected any day.
In recent years, SAF has become a legal powerhouse in firearms litigation. Gottlieb told TGM Tuesday morning the foundation has approximately 50 different cases underway around the country.
In a message posted Monday, the state Department of Enterprise Services announced the Legislative Building would be closed until after Inslee signed the gun ban bill and two other gun control measures “out of an abundance of caution.”
