By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The Washington State Department of Licensing is reporting, for the second month in a row, the number of active concealed pistol licenses (CPLs) in the state is above 700,000, which translates to roughly one in 9 or 10 eligible adults being licensed to carry.
Washington is the smallest state in the continental U.S., and is considered a “blue” state politically, but for the past several years it has consistently been among the top ten in terms of per capita concealed carry, with even more citizens, especially in rural areas, opting to occasionally open carry. The state has always been an open carry state.
Licensed concealed carry first was adopted back in the 1930s.
TGM, and prior to that, Gun Week, has monitored the number of active CPLs in the state since January 2013. At that time, according to the Licensing Department, there were 392,784 active CPLs, so in a bit under 12 years, the number has gone up about 40-45 percent.
By the end of 2015, the number of active licenses had climbed to 509,578, and the number continued to rise through the rest of the decade, with a sharp drop during the pandemic in 2020, when some law enforcement agencies suspended—without statutory authority—taking applications for licenses, although renewals continued. When things returned to normal, the numbers went up, hovering between 690,000 and 698,000 for more than a year.
The numbers were on a roller coaster pattern until this summer, when the threshold was reached in July, topping out a 701,020 active CPLs. The August dip represents a drop of 446 licenses, which could be attributed to any number of things.
One factor which may actually account for the sluggishness of the rise has been the exodus of many gun owners from the state due to the anti-gun policies of Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Democrats controlling the Legislature. In recent years they have pushed through bans on so-called “assault weapons” and “large capacity magazines,” and added a 10-day waiting period on all firearms transactions.
Still, those increasingly restrictive gun control laws has not resulted in lower violent crime number. Quite the opposite is true. Since 2014, according to data from the FBI Uniform Crime Report and Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, the number of homicides in Washington has doubled, and in just Seattle, the number of murders had tripled by the end of 2023, although it appears the city is looking at a decline in homicides this year, with 44 on the books so far in 2024, according to Seattle Homicide (not connected to the Seattle Police Department).
Washington remains one of the 21 states which still require a permit or license to carry a concealed handgun. Twenty-nine states have adopted permitless carry laws, dubbed “constitutional carry” because at the time the constitution was adopted, there were no such permits.
The Evergreen State has a long tradition of gun ownership, and when the state constitution was adopted in November 1889, a strong right-to-bear-arms provision was included in the text.
It appears the bulk of the 446 fewer CPLs all came from King County, the state’s most liberal and overwhelmingly Democrat enclave. Over the past month, King County lost 382 CPLs. Other losers were Pierce and Snohomish counties, both bordering on King County.
