SEATTLE — Gun sales in Washington have fallen dramatically this year, according to federal background check data, as a suite of new state gun regulations took effect.

The drop-off in Washington sales in the first three months of 2024 is much more significant than the modest drop-off seen nationwide in the same period.

The decline follows a nearly unprecedented spike in Washington gun sales at this time last year, as gun buyers rushed to make purchases while state lawmakers debated and ultimately passed a ban on AR-15s and similar semiautomatic weapons that took effect immediately. Washington was the 10th state to ban the high-powered semiautomatic rifles.

On Jan. 1 of this year, a new law took effect requiring a 10-day waiting period and mandatory safety training for all gun purchases in the state.

Gun sales in Washington in January and February, as measured by background checks, were about half what they were in January and February of 2023 — about 19,000 per month this year, compared with about 38,000 per month last year. In March, there were a little more than 22,000 background checks for gun sales in Washington, down more than 70% from the more than 77,000 checks in March 2023.

Nationally, background checks fell by only about 11% through the first three months of the year.

Background checks, conducted by law enforcement, while not a perfect match, are considered the best available metric of gun sales, nationwide and on a state-by-state basis.

It's not certain that Washington's new laws spurred the rapid up and down swings in gun sales, but the circumstantial evidence is strong.

"We can't say definitively whether these policy debates or the policies impacted sales numbers, but it would be consistent with events we've seen in other states," Mike Faulk, a spokesperson for Gov. Jay Inslee, who requested the legislation mandating waiting periods and training and the ban on AR-15-style weapons, wrote in an email. "The whole point of the assault weapons ban was to prevent weapons of war being sold and distributed in Washington. There's no legitimate reason to have them in our communities."

Just in the last year, Washington's Democratic-controlled Legislature has passed the ban on AR-15-style weapons, the 10-day waiting period and mandatory training, a bill to hold gunmakers liable for negligent sales and a prohibition on carrying guns in libraries, zoos and transit facilities.

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