Some Washington officials have pushed for decades to enact laws intended to reduce gun deaths by making firearms more secure at home. With Initiative 1639, voters in November will have a chance to weigh in on so-called safe storage laws.
For more than two decades, some Washington officials have pushed for laws intended to reduce gun deaths by making firearms more secure at home.
Those efforts — from an unsuccessful ballot initiative in 1997, to legislation sponsored year after year at the state Legislature — never came anywhere near to becoming law.
But 2018 has become a consequential year for so-called safe-storage laws.
This summer, the cities of Seattle and Edmonds each passed local laws allowing civil penalties to be levied against people who have not secured their guns.
Those actions promptly drew lawsuits[1] by the National Rifle Association and Bellevue-based Second Amendment foundation, which point to a state law[2] that bans local jurisdictions from enacting firearms regulations.
On Monday, the Metropolitan King County Council approved its own safe-storage law with civil fines of up to $1,000. It too, is likely to draw a lawsuit.
The new statute overcame the opposition of a handful of council members concerned about potential legal fees and worries that it could prevent gun owners from fending off a home invasion.
“When firearms are stored securely, it means that these tragedies are less likely to happen,” Councilmember Joe McDermott, one of the measure’s sponsors, said before the vote.
Before those lawsuits are resolved, Washingtonians will weigh in on safe storage.
Frustrated after proposals again stalled this year at the Legislature, advocates of tighter gun restrictions have put a safe-storage component into the sweeping gun-regulations proposal known as Initiative 1639[3].
Voters on Nov. 6
