From guns to eyeball tattoos: New laws in effect in Washington

From gun violence protections and stronger sexual assault laws to new protections for renters and making sure criminals know how to get their voting rights back, dozens of new laws took effect in Washington over the weekend.

New Washington laws taking effect over 2019

While I-1639’s gun regulations garnered most of the headlines this legislative round, there are several other new laws that just kicked in:

• The statute of limitations for sex crimes against children is eliminated, and extended to 10 to 20 years for most sex crimes involving adult victims. This was a huge victory for Rep. Dan Griffey whose wife and daughter are both sexual assault survivors. He fought for the change for years, and still plans to fight for an overall end to the statute of limitations for most sex crimes.
• New protections for renters took effect Sunday, including an extension to 14 days to pay late rent before being evicted, rather than the old three-day pay-or-vacate rule.
• Personal or philosophical exemptions for the MMR vaccine are ill no longer be allowed in Washington.
• Got a misdemeanor pot conviction on your record? Courts must now vacate those convictions, if you ask, in most circumstances. A person must have been 21 or older at time of arrest. Close to 60,000 people impacted in the state.
• People convicted of indecent exposure will now also have to give up their DNA. This did not used to be the case.
• Scleral tattoos — the process of tattooing an eyeball — are now illegal in Washington.
• The Department of Corrections has to let felons know about the process to go through to get heir voting rights back upon their release.

New gun laws in Washington

Among the big changes to Washington’s gun regulations that just went into effect — expanding the use of Extreme Risk Protection Orders or “ERPOS” to minors. Kids are not legally allowed to have guns, but their parents are. So this allows the court to issue an ERPO against a minor if they meet the criteria, such as make threats that suggest they are a danger to themselves or others.

Lewis County DA: I-1639 is ‘an unenforceable law’

Unlike ERPOS for adults, which temporarily remove a person’s access to guns, this law does not require parents to turn over their guns if their kid is served with an ERPO. But Senator David Frockt — who led the effort for the new law — says law enforcement will be stopping by to fill mom and dad in.

“They can bring that order directly to the home,” “It’s not served really on the parents, but they are required to give the parents notice that, ‘Hey your kid is making threats and if you have firearms, this is serious, you need to make sure they are stored safely.’ I think what is interesting is that in the first debate of the bill, one of the key Republican senators stood up on the floor and said, ‘If this were happening with my kid, I would want to know, I would want to know, and that is why I’m voting for this bill.'”

Another new law requires law enforcement to remove guns when they’re called to domestic violence situations.

Tallman Trask with the Alliance for Gun Responsibility says a couple of other new laws aimed at keeping guns away from people dealing with behavioral health issues also took effect Sunday.

The first requires courts to take away a person’s gun rights if they have a history of violent acts after a judge dismisses a non-felony charge against them because they’re found incompetent to stand trial without having them involuntarily committed.

“It ensures that people who are found incompetent to stand trial and have a history of violent acts aren’t easily accessing firearms in Washington,” Trask said. “Those individuals weren’t currently being added to our list of prohibited purchasers so they are not being caught in background checks, not failing those background checks and potentially cold access firearms.”

Another new law ensures that people who are held for 72 hours under the involuntary treatment act — because they are considered likely to harm themselves or others — automatically lose their gun rights for six months.

“It establishes a temporary six month prohibition on firearms access or purchase for those individuals,” Trask said. “That’s really because we know that evidence has shown that people who are held at these times are at specific risk, particularly of causing harm to themselves within this brief period after the hold … it automatically goes into the system, hopefully it will automatically come out of the system. To make things safer for everyone, particularly people who are suffering with mental health crises.”

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