High-capacity magazines were legal to buy and sell in Washington for about 90 minutes last Monday, after Bashor issued his opinion and before the state Supreme Court halted it from taking effect. In that time, Gator's Custom Guns, the Kelso gun shop at the heart of the litigation, sold hundreds of high-capacity magazines, said Wally Wentz, the store's owner.

Bashor's opinion follows the 2022 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case known as Bruen, striking down New York's law requiring concealed-carry license applicants to demonstrate a special need for self-defense.

In Bruen, the Supreme Court tossed aside the traditional way of evaluating gun laws: weighing the public interest against the individual's right. Instead, courts now had to determine whether a gun law is "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition." The ruling has led to hundreds of court cases nationwide challenging the constitutionality of both new and longstanding gun laws.

Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation, thinks a lot of Washington's gun laws are in jeopardy.

"All because of the 1791-era analogue that anti-gun people can't find because it doesn't exist," Gottlieb said.

Gottlieb's organization has filed numerous lawsuits seeking to invalidate gun laws in Washington and elsewhere.

How could there be a 1791 analogue regulating something that wasn't created until years or decades later?

"In 1791 it wasn't just the Second Amendment, it was also the First Amendment era," Gottlieb said. "There were no satellite dishes, there was no internet, there were no high-speed printing presses, but that doesn't mean they weren't protected by the First Amendment. New technology is still protected by the Bill of Rights."

Attorney General Bob Ferguson, in court filings, called Bashor's ruling an "extreme outlier."

"There is nothing unreasonable about restricting the sale of deadly

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