Washington State: I love it, but seek legal info

Now that the other thread got rudely bumped onto this thread while I was posting a reply, my comment is gonna seem way off topic, but tough-o.

IN regards to an aside in the OP the Eastern WA "desert" is actually considered a steppe, although we all call it "the desert." Great place to visit, great place to live. We are gonna retire over to SE WA in the next couple of years. The proliferation of wineries on sage lands over the last fifteen years means you gotta drive further to find places to shoot, at least around our vacation property. And the cheap acreage is 'bout gone.

Our legislature is solidly Democratic and unlikely to change soon. Tons of anti-gun bills get filed every session, but so far, the hard work of people like Workman and Waldron at keeping us informed and getting the various shooting/hunting groups to work together seems to keep most of 'em bottled up. We need more folks willing to fight to regain lost ground like you are proposing to do with the silencer issue to help keep those legis-takers off balance!
James

sorry buddy but we are full unless your a really hot down to earth young lady between the ages of 19-25, who likes guns the out doors, MMA, rap music and classic rock.

nah really the PNW is a great place full of some of the nicest people you will ever meet.

Indoor would be Wade's in Bellevue or a place down by the Tacoma Dome.

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I'm new here so this is a little late but sounds like you haven't moved yet. The place at the Dome is Bullseye Shooters Supply. Somewhat infamous now since the illegal gun the DC sniper (Malvo?) was traced there. I bought a few guns there, got a decent trade-in and then a not so decent experience. The range is the upstairs floor, a separate entity or so they say. It's small and unsupervised from what I could tell. I got a little nervous when I saw the excitement of the young teenage girls getting to shoot
a 12 guage pump action for the first time.

IIRC, the original point of this thread was the desireability of WA as a potential place of residence, esp gun laws.
I don't open carry in town. Why provoke a conversation with the police? On those rare occasions when I'm out in the rural areas open carry is dandy for a gun too big to conceal. Besides OC says 'Shoot me first" if you're gonna need your piece. I pack concealed and keep in mind that Seattle is as dangerous as any other big city when I go there.
Weather- How you view the climate is entirely subjective. Some folks like the gray drizzle (default state). Summer: about 1 out of 3 or 4 years has a Summer longer than 3-4 weeks of nice weather in Aug. or Sept. East of the Cascades has 4 seasons and resembles the rest of the Western USA.
In fact WA is really 2 states: The Seattle-Tacoma megalopolis, and the rest. Pugetropolis is the Liberal Utopia. The rest is like Normal America. If you get sick of the weather and need to see the sun, take a trip to Eastern WA.

Ya might concider the state just south of Washington, Oregon! CHL
are given out by County Sheriffs with a requirement of being a resident
and having taken a firearms safety course. Right now, they do not
recognize other states CCWs. Taxes are lower, and it seems more
public lands are available for use. Most attorneys that I know in the area
that I live are firearms related active. No clue of high density populated
areas such as Portland, but it seems like left leaning influances have moved
there from somewhere else. Had my choice of Washington State and here.
Never regretted my choice. Property tax after retirement was a large factor
with other comparisons, there were no positives to consider for a total.

Pugetropolis is the Liberal Utopia.

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Little perplexed this myth keep getting perpetuated. Plenty of rural rednecks and conservatives on the West side of the Sound, so long as you stay above the Narrows Bridge and away from Bainbridge Island, maybe Port Townsend ...

Mainsail, you're just a darned troublemaker and you know it.
You and Lonnie...changing the face of Washington, one policeman at a time (to paraphrase Dave Ross of KIRO)... occasionally with this writer twerp who "speaks fluent cop" working quietly in the background to make sure everyone behaves himself.

Mr. Wilson, rather than relying on the ambiguous interpretation of a poorly-worded statute, and some very few case law opinions, some of which are unpublished, why not move towards having an unambiguous statute passed that explicitly allows open carry?

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This legislature will never pass such an amendment to current statute, and even if it did, this governor would never sign it.

That said, Mainsail is quite correct in noting that we do not require a statute because the practice of open carry is protected by the State Constitution, Article 1, Section 24, and the police know it.

The other day at the WAC gun show, a pal of mine, KCSO, and I were chatting about OC. He asked me about concerns that the legislature might pass a law to forbid the practice.

Fine, says me. At that point two things will happen. First, the day after it is signed, expect a civil rights lawsuit to be filed along with a request for a permanent injunction.
Second, expect another lawsuit that would require the state to stop charging a fee and requiring a license to carry concealed.

Now, the reason for the second lawsuit is simple. If the legislature prohibits citizens from exercising their state constitutional right to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state by one means (open carry) then the state cannot legally or constitutionally require concealed pistol license for carrying concealed, because, as the US Supreme Court has already ruled, you cannot be required to pay a fee/tax to exercise a constitutional right.

Therefore, concealed carry would become blanket and licenses would be irrelevant because concealed would be the only means of exercising one's constitutional right.

This made perfect sense to my pal, who related as to how he's had the experience when some younger deputy observes someone open carrying.
"Did you see that guy?"
"Yeah, so what? Want to grab lunch?"

Much of the consternation about open carry - a practice about which I am personally indifferent - usually is generated by people who, uh, "ain't from around here" or who grew up in Seattle's regressive liberal enclave and have not yet grown mature enough to understand the concepts of liberty and freedom.

Little perplexed this myth keep getting perpetuated. Plenty of rural rednecks and conservatives on the West side of the Sound, so long as you stay above the Narrows Bridge and away from Bainbridge Island, maybe Port Townsend ...

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Hey now Will, I resemble that remark! There are at least a couple hundred of us not-so-rural, used-to-be rednecks on BI (sunscreen, it's a good thing, and not just for necks).

As for our WA & Seattle electeds (a couple of whom are former employers), I concur that nothing will change their minds and it probably isn't worth the effort to try. Politics is the art of the possible, not the ideal.