Sanctuary city for gun rights? Washington state city mulls law to protect 2nd Amendment

REPUBLIC, Wash. – In this small town, near the Canadian border, Police Chief Loren Culp has become a celebrity after announcing he would not enforce a new sweeping gun control law passed by state voters in November.

“I felt it was such a blatant disregard for constitutional rights that I felt like I had no choice but to stand up for the people that I served, and that’s the citizens of Republic,” Culp said.

Initiative 1639 touches on many areas of gun control. It bars 18 to 20 year olds from buying semi-automatic rifles and makes it a potential felony if your gun ends up in the wrong hands. The law also creates enhanced universal background checks, mandates firearms training before buying a semi-automatic weapon and defines an assault rifle as “any rifle which utilizes a portion of the energy of the firing cartridge to extract the fired cartridge case and chamber the next round, and which requires a separate pull of the trigger to fire each cartridge.”

Voters across Washington state approved the measure 59-41. But in Ferry County, which includes Republic, nearly three out of four voters opposed it. Republic Mayor Elbert Koontz is among them.