What Washington state has done is -- as far as I know -- unique. Its ruling Democrat establishment secretly decided two decades ago to undermine the Second Amendment NOT by outright gun bans but rather by imposing ever-more-severe restrictions on firearms use. Long term, the Democrat belief is that when gun use has dwindled beyond a certain point, gun ownership will dwindle also, and eventually it will be possible to impose strict, New-York-City type gun control throughout the state.
You can still shoot on your own property (as long as it's not in one of the ever-multiplying no-shooting zones or restricted-firearm areas), but all the gravel pits, sand pits, informal hillside ranges etc. are now closed. This was not accomplished by a single regulation but by a meticulously planned campaign of harassement by anti-gun bureaucrats at all levels of government, part of the overall war-against-shooters (and the Second Amendment) that's been going on here ever since the Democrats took over the state government, which they have controlled since 1984. (This includes the Department of Fish and Wildlife, which is dominated by environmental zealots who regard hunters and fishers as criminals and behave accordingly.)
The closure measures are cunning. They range from intimidating private land owners (telling landowners they are civilly and even criminally liable if a plinker accidentally gets shot on land open to shooting; threatening "toxic waste" lawsuits by the Department of Ecology over lead accumulation) to total closure of back-country access roads, and posting of state land as "no shooting" except during authorized hunts.
The road closures have hit particularly hard. Unofficially -- the state refuses to release the real numbers -- resident hunting and fishing license sales have declined more than 60 percent since the closure program went into effect in the early 1990s. I can easily believe this: none of the land I formerly hunted, or the rivers I formerly fished, are accessible anymore. The road closures are designed to force you to trek many miles on foot or horseback before you even get to game woods or trout water; indeed, the distances are such that packing out an elk (or even a deer) is impossible without blood-broken horses or mules. A decreasing number of increasingly smaller areas are opened each year for big game hunting accessible via motor vehicles, but increasing overcrowding makes such areas increasingly unsafe, and were it not for the radical decrease in hunters, the accidental-shooting toll would no doubt have soared -- which is clearly part of the hidden intent of the anti-gunners.
I haven't hunted since 1998, when a game warden drew his sidearm on my best friend and me merely because we hesitated while approaching an exit-checkpoint. (My friend and I were deciding whether to leave the area or continue hunting.) I haven't trout-fished since 1999, when a road-closure turned accessing the last of my favorite rivers from a pleasant one-mile hike into a grueling seven-mile trudge each way, a round-trip of 14 miles on foot.
I could go on for page after page, as what I have described here is only the tip of the oppressive iceberg, which includes hunting-license checks routinely conducted at gunpoint (as if they were felony traffic stops) and fishing and hunting laws deliberately written to be so user-unfriendly the wardens brag -- yes, brag -- that 80 percent of the tickets they write are for "inadvertant" violations. As I said, it is no accident the NRA started its save hunting/save plinking campaign here in Washington state.
You can still shoot on your own property (as long as it's not in one of the ever-multiplying no-shooting zones or restricted-firearm areas), but all the gravel pits, sand pits, informal hillside ranges etc. are now closed. This was not accomplished by a single regulation but by a meticulously planned campaign of harassement by anti-gun bureaucrats at all levels of government, part of the overall war-against-shooters (and the Second Amendment) that's been going on here ever since the Democrats took over the state government, which they have controlled since 1984. (This includes the Department of Fish and Wildlife, which is dominated by environmental zealots who regard hunters and fishers as criminals and behave accordingly.)
The closure measures are cunning. They range from intimidating private land owners (telling landowners they are civilly and even criminally liable if a plinker accidentally gets shot on land open to shooting; threatening "toxic waste" lawsuits by the Department of Ecology over lead accumulation) to total closure of back-country access roads, and posting of state land as "no shooting" except during authorized hunts.
The road closures have hit particularly hard. Unofficially -- the state refuses to release the real numbers -- resident hunting and fishing license sales have declined more than 60 percent since the closure program went into effect in the early 1990s. I can easily believe this: none of the land I formerly hunted, or the rivers I formerly fished, are accessible anymore. The road closures are designed to force you to trek many miles on foot or horseback before you even get to game woods or trout water; indeed, the distances are such that packing out an elk (or even a deer) is impossible without blood-broken horses or mules. A decreasing number of increasingly smaller areas are opened each year for big game hunting accessible via motor vehicles, but increasing overcrowding makes such areas increasingly unsafe, and were it not for the radical decrease in hunters, the accidental-shooting toll would no doubt have soared -- which is clearly part of the hidden intent of the anti-gunners.
I haven't hunted since 1998, when a game warden drew his sidearm on my best friend and me merely because we hesitated while approaching an exit-checkpoint. (My friend and I were deciding whether to leave the area or continue hunting.) I haven't trout-fished since 1999, when a road-closure turned accessing the last of my favorite rivers from a pleasant one-mile hike into a grueling seven-mile trudge each way, a round-trip of 14 miles on foot.
I could go on for page after page, as what I have described here is only the tip of the oppressive iceberg, which includes hunting-license checks routinely conducted at gunpoint (as if they were felony traffic stops) and fishing and hunting laws deliberately written to be so user-unfriendly the wardens brag -- yes, brag -- that 80 percent of the tickets they write are for "inadvertant" violations. As I said, it is no accident the NRA started its save hunting/save plinking campaign here in Washington state.
