The Washington Court of Appeals issued a ruling that nullified a law that would required every gun feature a lock and be stored with it.
The law was in violation of a state law that barred local laws from being stronger than the states laws.
From Guns.com:
The opinion of the three-judge panel, published Monday, sides with a group of gun owners and the Second Amendment organizations that backed them, holding that the City of Edmonds didn’t have the authority to pass their gun lock law. The court pointed to Washington’s 1985 preemption law, which bars local governments from adopting gun control ordinances stronger than the state’s.
“We … conclude that the legislature’s express preemption of ‘the entire field of firearms regulation’ is unambiguous and necessarily extends to regulations of the storage of firearms,” said Acting Chief Judge Beth Andrus for the panel that included Judges Bill Bowman and Lori Kay Smith.
The Seattle suburb in 2018 adopted the ordinance mandating that guns be locked up under penalty of civil fines that range up to $10,000. The proposal was made in conjunction with local and national anti-gun groups who supported its passage. It saw immediate legal challenges from local gun owners Brett Bass and Swan Seaberg, backed by the Second Amendment Foundation.
While this one area was freed up from these meaningless and harsh restrictions on firearm ownership this is not a national victory for the 2nd Amendment.
