Underscoring their nature as grinches, Democrats in Washington state pre-filed House Bill 1132 on Christmas Eve, which establishes limits on purchasing guns and ammunition. One gun per month and limits on the number of rounds anyone can buy in a 30-day period.
One might guess the timing was deliberate, a sort of “Merry Christmas, You Undesirables” from the Party of Gun Prohibition.
If the bill passes, it is a safe bet that incoming anti-gun Democrat Gov. Bob Ferguson will sign it.
Under the terms of this legislation, a retailer can sell no more than 100 rounds of .50-caliber ammunition, or 1,000 rounds of any other caliber of ammunition, “to a purchaser or transferee within a 30-day period.”
HB 1132 is sponsored by veteran House anti-gunners Darya Farivar (D-46th District) and Timm Ormsby (D-3rd District). Farivar’s sentiments are not surprising, since her district covers much of North Seattle, a liberal stronghold in western Washington.
But Ormsby’s district covers Spokane, which is smack in the middle of Evergreen State “gun country” and 20 minutes from the Idaho border, where gun ownership isn’t considered by liberals to be a social disease. The city has turned blue over the past several years, surrounded by a countryside which is pure red, where fluorescent orange, firearms, camouflage, and conservative politics have held sway for decades.
This is the part of Washington state where angry voters threw out of office Democrat House Speaker Tom Foley, who had served in Congress for a very long time. This was in 1994, the mid-term election which saw Foley’s party take a direct political nuclear strike because they voted for Bill Clinton’s crime bill, which included the ten-year ban on so-called “assault weapons.” At the time, the term “pissed off” just didn’t quite describe the fury of voters, in Foley’s district and across the country.
That was then. This is now. Democrats firmly have a stranglehold on the Washington Legislature, so they are pushing—as previously reported by Ammoland News—the restrictive gun control agenda of the billionaire-backed and Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility, the Northwest’s most powerful gun prohibition lobbying group.
HB 1132 spans 3 ½ pages, and it is definitely part of the Alliance gun control agenda, on the list right above establishing a tax on firearm and ammunition sales. That legislation would essentially turn the entire state into Seattle, where a gun and ammunition sales tax was adopted almost ten years ago.
But here’s a key issue of debate: Since Seattle adopted that gun control tax in 2015, the number of homicides in the city has tripled, from 20 murders in 2016 to 64 in 2023. So far this year, more than 50 murders have been logged in the city. The tax cannot be blamed for the violence, but it can legitimately be argued the tax has not prevented the body count from skyrocketing. The data comes from the Seattle Police Department.
However, the “X” site known as Seattle Homicide, which is not affiliated with the police department, says 2023 produced 74 homicides. So far this year, says the site, 59 people have been slain in the city.
One longtime Washington gun retailer told Ammoland via private message HB 1132 is “just another trainwreck.”
Noting how similar laws are currently being litigated, and struck down, in other jurisdictions, this legislation amounts to a war of attrition. “Literally,” he said, “anything they can think of, they’ll submit. It shows the abject stupidity of these lawmakers.”
“Stupidity” may apply in terms of whether they honestly believe such restrictions will reduce or prevent crime, but rights-hating Democrats know such measures infuriate and frustrate gun owners, which is exactly what they want to do. Were they in elementary school, one might argue, this would be called bullying, because they know they can get away with it.
Critics argue such legislation does not prevent crime, nor does it stop suicide. Criminals ignore the law already. But instead of ever admitting a gun control bill has failed, anti-gunners traditionally double down and push even more restrictions.
Gun rights activists have scheduled a Legislative Workshop on Monday, Jan. 6 at the Tacoma Sportsmen’s Club, 6-8:30 p.m. The legislative session kicks off Monday, Jan. 13 in Olympia, and it appears certain this and other gun control measures will bring a flood of calls to the state’s toll-free Legislative Hotline at 800-526-6000.
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About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
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