Supreme Court Case Could Void Washington’s Assault Weapons Ban
Joy Ale
August 6, 2026
Supreme Court Case Could Void Washington's Assault Weapons Ban
Picture Credit: Tim Mossholder
When the U.S. Supreme Court takes up consolidated challenges to semiautomatic rifle bans next term, the case will test a Washington law that would not have applied to the shooting that killed three people at the Bite of Seattle on July 26. The weapons recovered at Seattle Center were handguns. Police said they collected a Polymer80 9mm ghost gun from the 15-year-old arrested at the scene, an unused Springfield 9mm, and a Glock .45 fitted with an automatic switch found during cleanup the following day. None falls under the 62 models the Legislature banned in 2023.
What connects the two stories is the magazine, not the rifle. The ghost gun carried a 33-round magazine and the Glock a 40-round magazine, both well beyond the 10-round limit Washington imposed in 2022. That law faces its own challenge, brought over the Kelso shop Gator’s Custom Guns and dismissed by the state Supreme Court last year. Rep. Jim Walsh, the Aberdeen Republican and state GOP chair, has said he expects the federal high court to strike the rifle bans and then turn to magazine capacity limits, and that the Gator’s case could be the one that gets there.
The Bite of Seattle case also illustrates the gap between what is prohibited and what is possible. The 15-year-old was too young to legally possess a handgun, the Polymer80 was an unserialized weapon assembled outside the licensed retail system, and the Glock switch that converts a pistol to automatic fire is already a federal felony. Junior Cee Niko Semo, the 19-year-old killed in the exchange, had been arrested in 2024 with a Glock carrying an extended magazine and an illegal modification. Every relevant restriction was already on the books.
That reading cuts more than one way. Gun rights advocates point to it as evidence that additional restrictions burden lawful owners without reaching people who ignore the law. Supporters of the limits argue the opposite, that a 40-round magazine in a crowd is precisely what the cap exists to prevent, and that enforcement failures are an argument for tighter supply rather than looser rules. The Supreme Court’s answer, expected next term, will be framed around rifles. Its reasoning about historical tradition and common use is what will determine whether Washington’s magazine law survives the round after.
