Washington state bans sale of assault weapons including AR-15s

By Kelsey Ables
Updated April 26, 2023 at 3:29 a.m. EDT|Published April 25, 2023 at 11:32 p.m. EDT


Washington state on Tuesday banned sales of assault weapons, including the AR-15, which has been used in some of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States.

Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed into law House Bill 1240, which prohibits the “manufacture, importation, distribution, selling, and offering for sale of assault weapons” and lists dozens of specific firearms — the AR-15, AK-47, M16 and M4 among them. It also prohibits equipment that can turn weapons into assault-style firearms and any semiautomatic weapon shorter than 30 inches in length. The bill includes some exceptions for firearms intended for military or law enforcement uses.

“Assault weapons have no reason other than mass murder. Their only purpose is to kill humans as rapidly as possible in large numbers,” Inslee said at the state capitol Tuesday. “AR-15s should not be idolized, they should be prohibited, and that’s what we’re doing here today.”


The White House praised the legislation, which press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said makes “every community in the state — from Seattle to Spokane and everywhere in between — safer and more secure.” Last month, President Biden called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban after six people were killed in a school shooting in Nashville.

We spent 7 months examining the AR-15’s role in America. Here’s what we learned.

The United States continues to face rampant gun violence, with more than 170 mass shootings recorded so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Assault weapons, which the bill describes as “civilian versions of weapons created for the military” that “are designed to kill humans quickly,” have long been at the center of conversations about how to prevent gun violence, especially the AR-15, which was used in mass killings in Newtown, Conn.; Parkland, Fla.; Uvalde, Tex.; and elsewhere. A 2019 report looking at public mass killings with four or more deaths found that assault rifles accounted for more than 85 percent of fatalities.

Washington is the 10th U.S. state to generally ban assault weapons, joining California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, as well as D.C., according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.


Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, who leads the Firearm Injury & Policy Research Program at the University of Washington, said that the new law considers “broader public safety interests” and is based on evidence-based links between assault weapons and mass shootings.

Opponents of Washington’s legislation say it violates the Second Amendment and mischaracterizes the weapons involved. The state’s Republican Party accused Inslee of “ignoring the root causes of gun violence and infringing on law-abiding citizens’ rights” in a post on Twitter.

The bill is already facing at least one legal battle. The Second Amendment Foundation, a Bellevue-based gun rights advocacy group, on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law on Second and Fourteenth Amendment grounds. The group’s vice president, Alan M. Gottlieb, accused the state of criminalizing “a common and important means of self-defense, the modern semiautomatic rifle,” and putting “politics ahead of constitutional rights.”


Bob Ferguson, the state’s attorney general, said at the capitol Tuesday that such legal action was expected and that his office has defended gun reform bills against the NRA and Second Amendment Foundation before. “We are undefeated, and we plan to keep that record intact,” he said.

Ferguson first proposed banning the sale of assault weapons after the 2016 shooting in Mukilteo, Wash., that left three teenagers dead. The gunman read an AR-15 manual before the killing and saw the weapon as a “symbol of power,” according to court documents reported on by The Post at the time.

Inslee also signed two other gun-reform bills Tuesday, including one that requires those interested in purchasing a firearm to go through safety training and a 10-day waiting period. The other allows consumers to more easily sue firearm manufacturers for “irresponsible conduct,” Inslee’s office said.

Guns in America
Mass shootings: There have been more than 600 mass shootings across the nation in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as any event in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are injured or killed, and includes many incidents with no fatalities. Such events have been on the rise in recent years, and a disproportionate number of shooters in the U.S. are young men.

Visualizing gun violence: These charts help show the the extent to which gun violence impacts people across the country.

Gun laws: Until the bipartisan Safer Communities Act in June, congressional efforts to significantly change gun policies had largely failed for at least a decade. The effectiveness of gun control laws is often debated politically — here’s what research shows.

Trying to stay safe: What should you do in the still-unlikely event you find yourself someplace where an armed person has opened fire? Experts say people should plan their escape route, move away from gunfire and find a way to regain a sense of control.