The signing of a Washington law limiting high-capacity ammunition magazines seems particularly timely.
On Wednesday, Gov. Jay Inslee signed a package of firearms-related bills passed by this year’s Legislature. Among them is a law that will take effect July 1 prohibiting the manufacture, distribution and sale of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Possession is not prohibited, and exceptions are provided for law enforcement and military personnel and vendors who supply them.
The signing followed a weekend in which there were at least nine mass shootings in the United States. One of them, at a car show in Dumas, Ark., left one person dead and at least 26 others injured. A mass shooting typically is defined as one in which at least four people — not including the shooter or shooters — is wounded. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been more than 100 mass shootings in the first three months of this year.
Surveys from Pew Research Center and Gallup last year showed that 48 percent of American adults considered gun violence a “very big problem” and 24 percent considered it a “moderately big problem.”
Our state is not immune to that scourge, and Inslee said, “We are not willing to accept gun violence as a normal part of life in the state of Washington.”
Nor should we. Reasonable measures that have broad public support can be pursued to reduce gun violence while still protecting the Second Amendment declaration that, “… the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Prohibiting magazines of more than 10 rounds does not infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms, nor does it infringe upon the right to procure ammunition for those weapons. Instead, it reduces but does not eliminate the chances of a mass shooting — an imperfect solution but a necessary step.
Members of the California-based Firearms Policy Coalition announced plans to challenge the new law in court — and they should. The U.S. Constitution must remain paramount in questions of gun control, and judicial review is an essential part of a system of checks and balances.
State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who has supported the ban for several years, expressed confidence that the law is constitutional and predicted his office will successfully defend it. In November, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a similar law from California.
Inslee also signed a measure prohibiting people from knowingly bringing firearms to a ballot-counting site or on-campus school board meetings. And a third law adds restrictions on the manufacture, sale or possession of “ghost guns,” prohibiting untraceable firearms.
According to Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey, the United States has about 120 privately owned firearms for every 100 residents. It is no coincidence that our nation has a gun-death rate that is eight times higher than Canada and 100 times higher than the United Kingdom. In the United States, more than half those deaths are suicides.
Prohibiting the sale of high-capacity magazines will not, by itself, lower that rate. But it is a commonsense step that will make mass shootings less likely. More important, it is a call to gun-rights activists to present ideas for reducing violence.
None of us should be willing to accept gun violence as a normal part of life in Washington or anywhere else in the United States. Legal steps that can reduce it should be celebrated.
