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Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Enhanced background checks required to purchase semiautomatic assault rifles

Semi-automatic assault rifles for sale
KATU.com
As of Monday, July 1, 2019, the King County Sheriff’s Office is required, by law (Initiative 1639), to perform enhanced background checks when a person is attempting to purchase or transfer a semiautomatic assault rifle. 

The purpose of the enhanced background check is to determine whether the person is legally eligible to possess a firearm.

“In keeping with my sworn duty to uphold and enforce the law, my Office will be performing these enhanced background checks as the requests are forwarded by local gun dealers,” said King County Sheriff Mitzi G. Johanknecht.

“These changes will increase the workload for Sheriff’s Office personnel who currently perform firearms background checks,” said Johanknecht. “Going forward we will need to assess whether our current staffing levels will be sufficient to complete the work, or whether we’ll have to ask for additional resources.”

The new law also requires safe storage of firearms, but does not mandate that weapons should be stored in a particular place or in a particular way. As always, the King County Sheriff’s Office encourages the safe and responsible storage of firearms.

Public Health – Seattle and King County has a resource page for those interested in learning more about various safe storage options, including up to 15% discounts for select storage devices at participating dealers.



1 comment:

  1. What the Sheriff failed to mention (purposely omitted?) is that the checks are an unfunded mandate to the agencies to conduct the background checks and subsequent follow-up checks. The agencies bear the additional costs. And despite the lead time for the enactment of this unconstitutional law, DOL did NOT have things in place for the changes in background checks. All the law did was to push more people into purchasing additional MSRs (modern sporting rifles) to avoid the HIPAA waiver aspects of this ill guided law.

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