OLYMPIA – Washington law will ban “ghost guns” made with 3D printers, remove the rights of a person who is found incompetent to stand trial to have a firearm and tighten a requirement for a concealed pistol license. Firearms can be removed from the homes of teens who are the subject of an extreme risk protection order because they might hurt themselves or others.
Gov. Jay Inslee signed a series of bills Tuesday tightening Washington gun laws along with dozens of others, including a revision to statutes on hate crimes, and requirements for better disclosure of contributions moved between political committees. The gun control laws would be “a model for the rest of the United States,” said Inslee, who is running for president.
“I’m proud that Washington voters and legislators have done much to promote common-sense gun safety in the last several years,” Inslee said when signing the bill banning firearms made with plastic 3D printers. “We’ve come a long way from 1994, if I may say so, on a personal note.”
In 1994, during his first term in Congress, then-Rep. Inslee voted for a ban on the manufacture and import of military-style semi-automatic rifles, was targeted by the National Rifle Association and lost his re-election campaign to Republican Doc Hastings as part of a GOP wave that captured seven of the state’s nine House seats. That ban expired in 2004 and was not renewed by Congress.
Washington voters put restrictions on the sale of semi-automatic rifles through an initiative last year, requiring the buyer to be at least 21 and requiring the same level of background check needed for a handgun.
Gun-rights advocates asked the Legislature to repeal the initiative, but lawmakers never seriously considered it. Instead, they passed a ban on undetectable and untraceable firearms, like those made from plastic with a 3D printer. A firearm must have a minimum amount of steel that would allow it to register on an X-ray machine, like the kind used for airport security.
Read More: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/may/08/ghost-gun-ban-other-firearms-laws-signed/
