Evergreen State Second Amendment activists are preparing for renewed battles over several pieces of holdover legislation including proposed limits on ammunition purchases, storage requirements and insurance, while Everytown for Gun Safety is flooding social media with inflammatory anti-gun-rights rhetoric.

The Washington Legislature convened Monday, Jan. 12, and the schedule for committee hearings on various bills can be found and followed here.

Held over from the 2025 session are these bills:

• HB 1132  Limit purchase of firearms and ammo within a 30 day period.*
• HB 1152  Storage Requirements of firearms in vehicles and other locations.
• HB 1386  11% tax increase on the purchase guns, parts and ammunition.
• HB 1504 Enhancing public safety by requiring financial responsibility to purchase or possess a firearm or operate a firearm range. Insurance per gun. (The bill requires at least $25,000 insurance per firearm, and that policies and bonds must be obtained on a per-firearm basis, with a separate policy or bond required for each distinct firearm. This would bankrupt people with moderate incomes or retired persons with large gun collections, which seems to be the purpose.)

For information about the individual House bills:  https://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/

(*The future of House Bill 1132 may be bleak now that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled last year that a similar law in California is unconstitutional. Washington is part of the Ninth Circuit, so the ruling applies. The case is known as Nguyen v. Bonta.)

• SB 5098  Restricting lawful carry of firearms, creating more NO GUN ZONES.
• SB 5099  Restrictions to business operations of licensed firearms dealers.

For information about the individual Senate bills:  https://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/ 

Against this backdrop, Everytown has been posting a series of advertisements on Facebook promoting restrictive gun control, primarily aimed at H.R. 38, a congressional bill on national reciprocity.

But Everytown rhetoric asserts, “H.R. 38 would create a federal mandate that would force each state to allow people from other states to concealed carry in them—even in states that wouldn’t otherwise let them. Our lawmakers should focus on keeping communities safe, not making it easier to carry hidden, loaded guns in more places.”

For those who want something a bit more offensive, Everytown declared in one posting: “The gun lobby and MAGA extremists want to override your state’s gun safety laws — making it easier for more people to carry hidden, loaded guns in public. Over 200 lawmakers in Congress are pushing a bill that would make every community less safe — letting people from other states with dangerous histories carry hidden, loaded guns in states that wouldn’t otherwise let them.”

Look closely and the same sort of incendiary rhetoric can be found popping up in daily news bulletins from established newspapers. For example, on the day after an ICE agent fatally shot a woman who allegedly drove a car at him in Minneapolis, the Chicago Sun Times promoted its coverage thusly: “A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent gunned down a woman who the feds say tried to run them down with her vehicle during a Minneapolis deportation operation, but — as in Chicago incidents — that narrative is being challenged.”

The term “gunned down” has a negative connotation. The actual story reported the ICE agent “shot and killed a Minneapolis driver on Wednesday during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown on a major American city — a shooting that federal officials said was an act of self-defense but that the mayor described as reckless and unnecessary.”

Protests have broken out all over the country, including in Seattle, where Washington’s gun prohibition lobby is headquartered. Lawmakers—all Democrats—from in and around the Seattle area are typically sponsors of restrictive gun control legislation, and a quick check of bills identified above confirms it.

Last year, Democrats in Olympia pushed through legislation mandating a permit-to-purchase requirement, starting in May 2027, for anyone wanting to buy a gun in Washington state. No Republicans voted for this. The requirement includes completion of a training course involving live fire, the same course anyone applying for a CPL will need to complete. Gun rights advocates insist the purchase permit requirement is blatantly unconstitutional. They will also oppose every other anti-rights bill on the agenda, and any new ones which might pop up.

Quite a few gun owners have already fled Washington for friendlier environs, including Arizona, Texas, Idaho, Montana and Florida, and they habitually make note of it when posting on Facebook or other social media platforms. Others, who can’t just pick up their families and leave due to jobs and/or other reasons, are hoping and praying the Department of Justice’s Second Amendment Section comes calling soon with Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon leading the way.

Last year in Washington state, the number of active concealed pistol licenses climbed from 699,140 in January to 704,906 on Dec. 31, according to data from the state Department of Licensing. In October, the number had surged to 711,564, but retreated from that high during the holiday season.

It remains to be seen whether 2026 will see more people rushing to obtain a CPL, which is good for five years, just to beat the May 1, 2027 deadline. Perhaps by then, Washington gun laws will be entangled in litigation.

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.