More than 337,000 Washington residents are licensed to carry concealed handguns today, according to data from the state Department of Licensing’s Business and Professional Division.
It's a new record for the Evergreen State.
This revelation is currently being discussed on the WA-Guns forum, where Bill Starks, who goes by the internet handle of “m1gunr,” has posted an e-mail exchange he had with the Department of Licensing. As of May 19, the number of concealed pistol licenses was 337,503, which is a considerable jump from last year, when this column was advised that some 270,000 active CPLs were in circulation.
A check with that agency Tuesday morning brought the figure down slightly to 337,336. That’s a decline of only 167 active licenses, and there are any number of explanations for that, with the most likely being that people do not get CPL renewal notices, so they forget to renew. The active CPL figure comes to roughly five percent of the total state population of 6.7 million, but a higher percentage of adults over age 21, which is the minimum legal age to qualify for a CPL in this state.
Meanwhile, according to Washington CeaseFire’s website, there are approximately 7,000 members of that organization in the Evergreen State.
Do the math.
Why are so many Washingtonians carrying firearms? According to Sgt. John Urquhart with the King County Sheriff’s Department, there does not seem to be any urgency about highly-publicized budget cuts, at least in his jurisdiction, so that probably isn’t it. (The good news in unincorporated King County is that with Kirkland’s annexation of three big neighborhoods at midnight tonight, the deputies assigned to those areas are being reassigned to patrol other parts of unincorporated King County. “That’s a good thing,” he noted.)
It may just be that increasing numbers of private citizens have realized that police and sheriffs deputies are rarely on the scene to actually interrupt a crime or prevent one altogether, and that – depending upon where in the state one lives – they may not be able to respond immediately, so help is not going to arrive in the proverbial nick of time.
As Joe Waldron, legislative affairs director for the Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has noted, “Guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens do save lives.” He cites peer-reviewed research by author/researcher John Lott that has repeatedly shown crime goes down in areas where gun ownership goes up.
Ultimately, people are responsible for their own safety, and the protection of their families, and especially children. This responsibility applies equally at home and outside the home, say in a community park.
This fact was brought home dramatically several days ago with the unprovoked dog attack at Kirkland’s Juanita Beach Park. An armed citizen shot one of three put bulls in self-defense as the animals jumped his own dog, and then one of the aggressive canines came at him as he tried to break up the battle.
This column discussed that attack here and here. The incident put a stark perspective on the successful challenge by the Second Amendment Foundation and CCRKBA to the City of Seattle’s attempt to ban firearms from city parks property. Seattle appealed the Superior Court ruling, and as this column reported, is waiting for a ruling from the State Court of Appeals.
Washington has what many in the firearms community call one of the most sensible concealed carry statutes in the nation. It is a “shall issue” law that allows very little discretion on the part of local police officials in the issuance of a CPL. One does not jump through lots of hoops designed to discourage applicants.
That’s probably one major reason the anti-gun Brady Campaign gives Washington only one out of five possible stars, and 17 out of 100 possible points when it comes to their grading of our gun laws. Another reason is Washington’s landmark preemption statute that places sole authority for firearms regulation in the hands of the state legislature, which is why Seattle's attempt to ban guns in park facilities was struck down. Gun prohibitionists want to change that, and allow anti-gun big city mayors and their councils to restore the checkerboard patchwork of conflicting gun regulations that led this state to adopt preemption more than 25 years ago. It has worked so well that dozens of other states have adopted similar laws.
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Assault on Weapons: The Campaign to Eliminate Your Guns
Washington State Gun Rights and Responsibilities
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