Gun sale law to change Thursday

OLYMPIA — As more-expansive gun background checks are set to take effect Thursday in Washington, law enforcement agencies, gun groups and others wait to see their impact.

Initiative 594, which passed this month with 59 percent of the vote, requires background checks on almost all sales and transfers, including private transactions and many loans and gifts. The exceptions include transfers between family members, sales of antiques produced before 1898, emergency gun transfers concerning personal safety and loans for hunting.

Six states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island — plus Washington, D.C., currently require universal background checks for all sales and transfers of all firearms, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

About a dozen other states’ laws go beyond federal requirements.

Once I-594 takes effect, personal transactions that do not already involve a dealer would require a background check, and the person selling or transferring a firearm would need to either meet the potential buyer at a licensed dealer, who would run the check, or, if the seller ships the firearm, send it to a dealer in the city where the potential buyer lives.

Mitch Barker, executive director for the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, said he’s heard concerns about the workload for the local law enforcement agencies that run the background checks.

“None of us will know until we get up and running,” he said.

The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System reports processing more than 560,000 firearm background checks in the state last year, and more than 388,000 between January and the end of October of this year.

How many more checks might occur depends on the size of the private market in the state, which is unknown.

However, a state Department of Licensing projection based on Colorado’s experience estimated that checks for private sales and transfers would be about 2 percent of all checks in the state: about 13,440 new background checks in the state through July.

That estimate grows to 35,481 new checks for the 2015-17 biennium, and to 51,093 for the 2017-19 biennium.

“Responsible gun owners aren’t going to see a difference,” said King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg. “What it might do is raise the risk for people who are willing to sell guns, no questions asked.”

But opponents say that people will still find a way to get guns without background checks.

A rally is scheduled at the Capitol on Dec. 13; protesters plan to openly exchange guns.

Barker, the executive director of the sheriffs and police chiefs association, does not believe that handing a gun to someone else violates the initiative, but he said that eventually the state attorney general will likely be asked for clarification.

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.

Under I-594, a person who knowingly violates the law could be subject to a gross misdemeanor; a knowing violation twice or more is a Class C felony.

Washington Arms Collectors, which organizes gun shows for members, recently announced it was working with dealers to offer $10 background checks at its shows.

“We’re trying to find ways to implement it and trying to find ways to implement it that are most cost-effective for the members,” said Phil Shave, the group’s executive director.