Recently, Shawn Vestal of the Spokesman-Review pointed out that Initiative 594 has worked in Washington:

“That single rejected sale last year is not of much import in the grand scheme of things, at a time when there are already more guns than people in the nation and gun sales are reaching record highs . . . It seems quite likely that many private buyers and sellers are simply ignoring the law, and Gov. Jay Inslee wants to take steps to make it work better.

But it’s worth asking a very simple question: Has [Initiative 594] prevented the sale of guns to people who should not have them?

It has. National Instant Criminal Background Check System statistics for 2015 show that 5,466 background checks were conducted for private sales in Washington from March to December. Of those, 102 sales were not approved and returned to the seller.

A hundred people who weren’t supposed to own guns were not allowed to buy guns, at least at one point of sale. It’s not many, but it’s not nothing. Snider, who says he was wrong about the law, was actually right. It worked.”