Washington State Democrats Draft New Regulations That Would Put Many Gun Shops Out of Business
‘All your mom and pop shops are slowly closing,’ one business owner says, urging lawmakers to vote no on proposed rules which would cost firearms dealers hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement.
Democrats in Washington state are pushing for sweeping gun regulations that local firearms dealers say will devastate their businesses through rules that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement.
The drafters of House Bill 2118 say it aims to protect “the public from gun violence by establishing additional requirements for the business operations of licensed firearms dealers.” Among the requirements are that nearly every area of the gun shops must be video recorded 24 hours a day, and those recordings must be stored for a minimum of six years.
The bill would also require businesses to “carry a general liability insurance policy providing at least $1,000,000 of coverage per incident” and mandates that outside of business hours, firearms be stored in a “fireproof safe or vault.” A locked display case is “not sufficient,” the law states.
“House Bill 2118 is not financially obtainable for small businesses like mine,” the co-owner of Sporting Systems, Heidi Lee, said at a recent hearing. “All your mom and pop shops are slowly closing, the sense of community and safety is being replaced by criminals and drug-induced zombies.”
She said that she “is not going anywhere” and will keep showing up at every hearing on the topic to fight back. Despite her shop already having “fantastic security in place,” the new requirements, if enacted, would cost her upwards of a million dollars.
“The estimates of what we would have to upgrade our system to is over $700,000 initially to get six years of records stored,” she said. “We would have to increase our rent space, which would triple our overhead each year, maintenance is estimated at another $350,000. It’s not something that we can do currently, I don’t know anybody that can.”
Ms. Lee has spent ten years building a “responsible and lawful” business, she said.
“Our staff are trained to work closely with every customer ensuring a legal transaction occurs. We have an occupancy limit based on the staff on hand to provide a comfortably secure environment,” she noted. “Staff are also trained to listen and observe in their interactions and identify key indicators of a straw purchase. In my ten years of business I’ve never had a firearm stolen nor have any walked out the door by themselves after business hours.”
