Last month, a majority of Washington state
voters imposed background check requirements on firearms transfers
between private parties. The i594 measure was hotly contested and
its passage triggered vows of defiance, including plans for
mass civil disobedience on December 13 at the state capitol.
The law goes into effect Thursday, for what that’s worth. Perhaps
the biggest challenge to the measure is that authorities have
little idea as to which state residents own what guns now. Without
knowing where guns start out, it’s essentially impossible to keep
people from gifting, selling, loaning, or otherwise transferring
them with little regard for the law.
Just when the law applies remains up in the air. Mitch Barker,
executive director for the Washington Association of Sheriffs and
Police Chiefs,
told the Seattle Times that he doesn’t think
it would prevent somebody from just examining another person’s gun,
but he admits that part will have to be clarified. On the other
hand, Dave Kopel, a
prominent firearms expert and adjunct professor at the University
of Denver’s law school, thinks the plain language of the law
does apply to simply holding somebody else’s firearm.
Confusion over the law, in addition to contempt for its control
freaky intent, is all the more reason to defy its requirements,
especially since enforcing the background checks is a bit of a slog
for authorities. The Seattle Times, again, has Barker of
the Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs
on that point.
As for how to enforce the law, Barker said that’s a bit
trickier.“If somebody committed a crime with a firearm, and if the source
was tracked back to someone who didn’t do a background check of the
person who they transferred the gun to, that to me would seem to be
the most likely scenario where a law-enforcement official would
take action,” he said.
If. That’s a little world patching over a big hole in the
law.
Despite the passage of i594, Washington doesn’t have especially
restrictive gun laws. In particular, it
doesn’t require licensing of guns or gun owners. Sales records
from licensed dealers exist, but they’re not updated to match
people’s movements from home to home, and in and out of the state.
They also haven’t accounted for private transfers, including
kitchen counter sales, presents, inherited weapons, exchanges, and
the like up until the passage of the new law. As of right now, who
owns what firearms-wise is pretty much a mystery so far as the
authorities are concerned. They might be able to pull up records of
an initial sale, but they can’t easily follow the trail from there
to its current owner. Years from now, whether a gun was transferred
before or after i594 took effect will generally be known only to
the parties who participated.
So people who want to sell guns to friends, give them to
relatives, or loan them to neighbors have little incentive to
subject themselves to the hassle and expense of a background check
unless they really enjoy intrusive bureaucracy. Historically, that
hasn’t been the case, as peoplein the United States and around the
world have
gone to great lengths to arms themselves and remain that way,
to the great discontent of government officials.
Washington residents illegally transferring guns might
face some risk if a new owner commits a crime, but the authorities
will still have to trace the gun’s history and prove it was
transferred after this Thursday to take any action.
Thousands of people say they will
publicly defy universal background checks requirements on
December 13. Maybe so. But more importantly, a great many people
will be free to ignore the law every single day, and there’s very
little the supporters of i594 can do about it.
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