The Washington State Patrol (WSP) is now accepting applications for “certified firearm safety training providers” who will be offering mandated gun safety courses for Evergreen State residents who want to obtain a “permit-to-purchase” a gun or obtain/renew their concealed pistol license beginning May 1, 2027.
The law is almost certain to be challenged in court on constitutional grounds. Democrats controlling the legislature passed House Bill 1163 last year, without a single Republican voting for the legislation.
According to a letter from Kevin L. Baird, assistant commander at the WSP’s Firearms Background Division, “We anticipate being able to start vetting training providers in September 2026.” He also noted in a message circulated to potential instructors in July that, “We anticipate being able to start vetting training curriculums in October 2026.”
“That being said,” his message stated, “we are on target for a January 2027 implementation date of the training certification user interface.”
Critics of the purchase permit/CPL training requirement contend it is unconstitutional to require a government-issued permit in order to exercise a constitutionally enumerated right. Both the federal and Washington state constitutions contain tenets that recognize and protect the right to keep and bear arms.
Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Article I, Section 24, Washington State Constitution: “The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.”
Course Requirements
According to the Baird message,
After the interested trainer is approved, they will email their curriculum for our review. RCW 9.41.1132(1) details the minimum required elements of the training:
(a) Basic firearms safety rules;
(b) Firearms and children, including secure gun storage and talking to children about gun safety;
(c) Firearms and suicide prevention;
(d) Secure gun storage to prevent unauthorized access and use;
(e) Safe handling of firearms;
(f) State and federal firearms laws, including prohibited firearms transfers and locations where firearms are prohibited;
(g) State laws pertaining to the use of deadly force for self-defense;
(h) Techniques for avoiding a criminal attack and how to manage a violent confrontation, including conflict resolution; and
(i) Live-fire shooting exercises on a firing range that include a demonstration by the applicant of the safe handling of, and shooting proficiency with, firearms.
Under the law’s second section:
“The training must be sponsored by a federal, state, county, or municipal law enforcement agency, a college or university, a nationally recognized organization that customarily offers firearms training, or a firearms training school with instructors certified by a nationally recognized organization that customarily offers firearms training. The proof of training shall be in the form of a certification that states under the penalty of perjury that the training included the minimum requirements.”
Also, according to the memo to trainer candidates, “Our vendor has begun development/programming of the user interface that trainers will use to provide certification of training for people they train. This will be 100% electronic instead of a physical certificate, so that the data can directly update the permit to purchase background check system. For concealed pistol license (CPL) training, the upload will be identical (and in many cases, the same training – no duplication), and available to the CPL issuing agencies look up.”
Some critics have suggested this amounts to gun owner registration.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the Seattle Times published a report August 26 in which anti-gun Democrat Rep. Liz Berry of Seattle lamented that there is still more gun control work to be done, which the Times story mislabeled as “gun reform” in its headline. Berry’s name often appears among sponsors of anti-gun-rights legislation in Olympia.
The report also asserted there have been disagreements among Democrats “over how to tackle gun violence and bewilderment that a safe-storage bill never advanced to a House floor vote in the past two years.”
Following a deadly July shooting at the Seattle Center on the final day of the annual “Bite of Seattle” celebration, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms—coincidentally headquartered in nearby Bellevue—issued a statement to local media, including the Times, which declared “Seattle Doesn’t Have a Gun Problem, It Has a Crime Problem.”
“If you look at the Seattle Police Blotter,” noted CCRKBA Executive Director Andrew Gottlieb at the time, “you will find reports of shootings and violent crime, including stabbings. Deflecting blame to guns is a non-starter because they just don’t commit crimes by themselves. We don’t blame cars for fatal crashes, and we shouldn’t infer guns are to blame for violent crime.”
Still, the new state law—and the effort to certify new firearms “trainers” in preparation for next May’s implementation of the training requirement to exercise the right to bear arms—does exactly that, say critics. Guns, and law-abiding gun owners, are being penalized for crimes they didn’t commit, gun rights activists maintain.
The issue will almost certainly be decided in court, perhaps by the state Supreme Court. As reported earlier by Ammoland News, there is a strong effort to elect conservative justices to the state high court, and if they succeed, at least part of the new statute could be in trouble.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
