Washington State recently enacted gun legislation which bans the sale of high-capacity magazines. A recent audit of 25 stores found two which were continuing to sell the prohibited items. More info here:
www.seattletimes.com/…
I don’t know how many gun retailers there are in Washington, but 2 out of 25 is an 8% noncompliance rate. Hopefully this isn’t representative of the industry statewide. I suppose I should be pleased that this number is only in the single digits, but what concerns me more is the government’s response to the violation.
State Attorney General Ferguson sued the store and its owner in King County Superior Court, seeking an injunction that would stop them from selling high-capacity magazines. The defendants face a maximum penalty of $7,500 for every time the store offered a high-capacity magazine for sale and $7,500 for every actual sale. I’m not sure if an instance of “offered for sale” is defined as directly offering to sell an item to an individual customer, or if simply having the items in a display case every day would count (if so, this could get very expensive for the store if they had them for sale for months). But either way, I’m curious to know why a violation would result in only a fine, confiscation/destruction of any remaining prohibited items, and a “don’t do this again” order from the state. Perhaps that’s what’s prescribed by the law, but if the state really wanted to show gun dealers that they mean business, these stores would lose their business licenses.
If I’m a car dealer and I’m found to be knowingly and deliberately selling stolen cars, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t just confiscate the cars and issue a fine against me. It seems like rather than being sued, I’d be prosecuted for crime. I’m guessing that this is a business regulation issue rather than a criminal law issue, so the state is responding within the parameters of the law. Whatever the case may be, these business owners have clearly shown blatant disregard for both the law and public safety, and by so doing could be enabling a future mass shooting event. I’m not sure they should be allowed to continue doing business at all.