Assault weapons ban passed
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May 3, 2023
I was lucky enough to be a raindrop in the sea of gun reform in Washington state. My husband and I attended one of the later hearings on HB 1240, the assault weapons ban, as representatives of Safe and Sane Skagit, a charter member of The Alliance for Gun Responsibility. SaSS was begun in 2015 after nine people were shot and eight wounded at the Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, OR., by one person’s sense of outrage and helplessness in the face of another gun tragedy. She sent a letter to friends saying, “Let us please do SOMETHING, join me.”
In the eight and one half years since its inception, there are two major realities: one, that shootings and the subsequent deaths have increased to such a degree that the news of yet another, based on fear, race, mistakes, anger, having a bad day, are so frequent as to seem almost casual in the churning, daily-news feeds; and two, that Washington has become the tenth state in America to pass an assault weapons ban after seven years of work by the Alliance and its supporters.
Washington’s new law prohibits the future sale, distribution, manufacture and import of more than 50 types of guns, including AR- and AK-style rifles but does not take away current possession. Going to Olympia to sit in the hearing chamber is to be a body in the Senate committee hearing room, as members look over the audience and see a sea of orange, the color of gun responsibility and reform.
Senators can visibly relate those bodies to a powerful level of public support. This year that small piece of the process seems to have had its affect for two other major pieces of gun reform, HB 1143, requiring a 10-day waiting period and proof of safety training, and SB 5078, allowing access to justice for victims of gun violence passed. Two more raindrops entered the sea of reform toward public safety and common sense in our state and across the country, even as the NRA cries foul.
Sincerely,
Christine Wardenburg-Skinner
Edison
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