Years ago, Washington decided to become a national leader when it came to gun safety, and one of the many laws it passed was the ban on high-capacity magazines. The devices enable a shooter to rapidly fire multiple rounds without reloading.
The ban, which became law with the passage of Senate Bill 5078 in 2022, has withstood challenges in state courts. Washington’s Supreme Court ruled in May that magazines are not arms and therefore the ban is constitutional.
And now, the plaintiffs in that case, Gator’s Custom Guns of Kelso, and its owner, Wally Wentz, have filed a petition of review asking the U. S. Supreme Court to take up the case. The court should reject it.
Last year, Gator’s Custom Guns challenged the law in Cowlitz County. Cowlitz County Superior Court Judge Gary Bashor agreed that the law violates the Second Amendment and a provision of the Washington Constitution and struck it down. The state appealed to the Washington Supreme Court, which overturned the lower court’s decision.
A ban on high-capacity magazines and weapons has proved successful. The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994, commonly known as the federal assault weapons ban, not only banned assault-style weapons such as the AR-15 for 10 years, but also banned the sale of high-capacity magazines. During that time, the number of mass shootings dropped. However, some researchers have said there are various factors besides the weapons and high-capacity magazine bans that contributed to that decrease.
The fact remains that high-capacity magazines helped carry out some of America’s most gruesome attacks on human life, including the 2023 shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., in which seven people were killed when the shooter opened up with three weapons supported by two 30-round magazines. And at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, a shooter killed 22 people with an assault-style weapon and had seven 30-round magazines. Nationwide in 2022, 53 lives were lost — many of them children — and 94 people injured in six mass shootings involving high-capacity magazines.
And from 2009 to 2022, the 10 mass shooting incidents with the most casualties all involved the use of at least one firearm equipped with a high-capacity magazine, according to Everytown.org, a gun violence-prevention organization.
At least 14 states currently ban high-capacity magazines, and for good reasons. One, the magazine bans save lives, and secondly, they don’t infringe on people’s right to bear arms.
