Washington State Unveils How Much It Will Cost You For Permission To Buy Gun

Washington state launched a website telling citizens how much it will cost them to get permission to buy firearms for a five-year period.

Democratic Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed the bill creating the permit-to-purchase scheme in May 2025, the Seattle Times reported. The price for the permit will be $90 for application, plus another $36 to cover fingerprinting by a law enforcement agency, according to the website the state created.

“Gun violence in Washington state breaks apart too many families and kills too many children,” Ferguson said upon signing House Bill 1163, which takes effect on May 1, 2027. “We must put commonsense reforms into place that save lives.”

The permit will be valid for five years, but anyone seeking the permit must first take a firearms safety course from an instructor certified by the Washington State Patrol. The site had no information on how much such a course would cost.

Washington previously enacted a law in 2023 requiring a waiting period of ten business days before any firearm could be transferred by a licensed dealer, with the wait taking longer if the background check was not completed.

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation in April 2025 initially introduced as an outright ban on so-called “assault weapons” that required anyone wishing to buy a modern semiautomatic firearm, including the AR-15 rifle, to first receive a firearms safety course eligibility card, then complete a firearms safety course within five years. The new requirements in Colorado include a training course of 12 hours that could cost up to $500, according to the Pikes Peak Courier.

NICS checks for long guns declined by over 75% in Colorado after the permit to purchase scheme took effect, Bearing Arms reported.

“They think that 14% of people who started this application have actually been able to complete the application to be able to purchase an SSF [specified semiautomatic firearm],” Colorado State Shooting Association Director of Operations Daniel Fenlason said in a Sept. 4 video. “So that’s a 14% completion rate, meaning that 86% have not completed it. That does not show that this is a system that’s functioning well.”

“Beyond that, we’re seeing 25 counties have zero people who have been able to go through any of these processes, which also shows that there’s a geographic blockage for people to be able to obtain these firearms,” Fenlason continued.

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court in Viramontes v. Cook County, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO) citied the Colorado law as something the high court should address when deciding the case regarding an Illinois locality’s ban on so-called “assault weapons.”

“After this Court identifies conduct protected by the Second Amendment, some states and localities replace the invalidated restriction with a different mechanism designed to produce substantially the same practical result,” the group said in the brief.

“The Court should reverse and make clear that constitutional rights cannot be narrowed through regulatory relabeling, cumulative burdens, or historically unsound analogy,” RMGO added.