The 2 Washington States, 1 CCW Permit State
You will find that the
Greater Seattle area stretches south into Tacoma 60 miles of
urban sprawl, passing south through Olympia (our state capitol city) and is bounded on the north by
Canada, the south by Longview,
Oregon. Seattle has plenty of jobs, a high cost of living,
plenty of great things to do
year round and the crime that comes with
rich-pickings, but it is less all-round rough than say Tuscon or NYC, Vegas or LA. Carrying a legal concealed pistol is
smart city living and using it without a
very good reason will get you headlines, and either a pat on the back or
hard time. Shame that the junkies & meth heads that call Seattle home don't seem to mind that part and pack
plenty more than
HIV and
rusty needles!
It is nice but it's urban and
$uburban with some
great wild wooded nature areas like the Olympic peninsular,
Mt. Tantalus is a hike U will
never 4-get! To the omnipresent, see it for hundreds of miles away dormant volcano
Mt. Rainier and the national forests that surround that area and hug the west-side slopes of the Cascades all down the coast to Mt. St. Helens,
still smoking a pack a day! Ports Angelese & Townsend are great little seaside villes, and
Puget Sound was good fishing, rain and cold with 4 solid seasons. Seattle living gets more hectic and expensive the closer you get to the
Space Needle, worth a look-see from the top
any day, fine dining as it rotates 360' so you get the whole view if you just stay put and
eat slow! Auto theft
may have you taking a cab home, with Canada so close it is like leaving your car parked overnight in
El Paso/Juarez,
may not B there when you get back. But even with subterranean (must-see) or the
Bohemian parts of the city it is still like all other big groups of culturally & morally diversified folks packed tight, plenty good areas,
some bad. If you want a good paying job that is where you head, or to Microsoft :akuma: in Redmond or Boeing both sides of the Cascades with a huge factory in Everett, Seattle and one right next to
Fairchild Air Force Base just west of my digs in Spokane. I-5 and U.S. 101 are your major N-S highways, if speed is the plan, stick to 75mph I-5, if beauty is your thing, try the
winding and weaving coastal U.S. Hwy 101 that starts at
Canada and ends at
Mexico!
Heading on I-90 over Snoqualmie pass (chains during heavy snow a must) takes you to the higher flat lands inland and towns like Yakima (apples and a U.S. Army firing center) and Wenatchee (farming), the Grand Coulee Dam (
awesome!), then just deserts, scrub-lands, pastures and arable farming lands. More like Kansas 2 hours drive and it still looks the same.
"R we there yet dad?"
Then if you want property at 1/2 the price to own or rent you go east,
Alpine like conditions and
colder WA. The
'other' part of Washington that is
SO different from the western part of the state, & where I call home. Eastern WA with Spokane the major road/rail & trade hub, at the foothills of the western-slope Rockies. The
Lewis & Clark trial (or what remains of it) runs right by my home. Mt. Spokane is a
honey and so is the town of
Coeur d'Alene right by it (Pro: core de lane) as you cross into
Northern Idaho, a 30 min drive east of Spokane, which means
'Children of the Sun' in the Spokane tribe native American language. Spokane is an island of civilization sitting at 2,700ft above Seattle and 280 miles 1-way drive west, 55 min air-hop surrounded by lakes,
huge pine forests, rivers, dams, wildlife galore, mines, mills, small hamlets, mountains, hills, and valleys. I was stationed for 2 years at Ft. Lewis, when the
9th Inf Div called it home, a unit that deactivated away after the
Bear sopped roaring. That huge training area hugs S. Tacoma, and in my mid 20's I enjoyed it,
tons of stuff to do and I frequented the best parts of Seattle
most weekends not deployed, seen some of the best concerts
of my life there from the the Rolling Stones to The Police to David Bowie! 19 years later I returned here to live in Spokane, been retired 4 years coming out of
CA in '01 which if I
never see again will be
way too soon!
Sorry but to each their own version of heaven and hell. IMHO Spokane is a great town/city of 200K with
lots to do but much more
laid back 'n friendly than Seattle or Tacoma (
Sea-Tac). Less crime, but it is still here, mostly in the valley. Good folks and a bastion of WASP living with a sprinkle of Hispanic, Afro-American and Native Americans. Active-duty & Veteran heavy and like most of WA there are military facilities or training areas
all over, I think I hit
every one!
Vet Hospitals at Seattle (overworked me
ss) and Spokane (ni
ce set up) with a new facility just opened in Wenatchee (
very nice!). When U have travelled as much as I have c/o an Army career, there has to be something
very special about the place you
finally get to call home, I've blown thru 100's of U.S. towns and cities, lived in some for 2-4 years yet I wouldn't swap a
free home and 5 acres of land for what I have here in the place I finally moved into my retirement middle years and call it home with
great pride! :Love:
As far as I know this URL will tell you
all there is to know about concealed carry in the State:
Link Removed
USA Carry also has an up to date link to the same which you
should try 1st as it summarizes the general intent, the link I posted breaks each part down to it's atomic particle
RCW subsections.
We have
one CCW law RCW 9.41.070 for the
entire State. It's a 'Stand your ground' and 'no open carry' (
brandishing!) place with all the normal no carry
nuthin zones: bars, schools/campuses, federal land, jails & courts to name but a
few you
better know by rote
before you put your (nonrefundable if U don't rate one of the
700K CCW permits already issued State-wide). Head to the local county/city court houses
early, bring
$60 cash
is best, your application and I.D. which should be WA or you are looking at getting an out of state version and a return trip to convert it over. Get a WA drivers license or the lease/lien on your digs and that works. You'll get a partial (thumb, forefinger) printing done by a
biometric-scanner and a
mug-shot :huh: which does not show up on your
card-stock permit as it
may in other states with their plastic bar-coded
hi-tech versions. You don't take any tests nor do you have to take/have training courses. Reciprocity by state
is a link on
USA Carry and a long search on
Google! Just wait <30 days for an
NIC to be run & it comes back to your home via normal U.S. mail.
Please know what makes you eligible for one
or don't even mess with applying for one until you do. 'Forgetting' a disqualifier equates to the State doing
much more than keeping your $60
! It's good for 5 years which you better follow to the day a renewal is a freebie mail-in renewal, but you get no warning (even by snail mail) that it will soon expire/has expired ='s U go thru a new 1st time issue run again. No copies are legal copies and you do not give yours to anyone but a LEO if they want to see it, saying '
No!' is
not a very smart next move! You
do not get duplicates, just replacements for lost cards, 1 for your CCW 'fanny-pack' and 1 for your wallet, which
would be nice but
too bad! Fancy CC tin badges with your CC # on them look
sharp in catalogs (
www.nles.com ) but are not worth the
C-note for the engraving and
no WA State LEO would even accept it as proof of anything but you wasted your time and
$'s on
bravado and
BS.
"We don't need no stinking BAHDGES!!!!"" oep2:
This is WA CCW
Gospel:
Link Removed
When packing you
better be clean & sober and up-front with
5-OH. WA is not a 'must-tell without being asked' law/your duty to inform if U R carrying, but a
very smart one to inform U R packing
if a
LEO pulls you over, and a
big mistake to lie as they have
already run your plates and that
WILL be one of their 1st questions. You can laminate it and you better have it with you whenever you CC, or you lose a
lot more than the right to CC
!
If you want to know more about the state than guns, tag this as a point of reference for everything RCW (laws) else:
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/ Revised Code of Washington
Hope you enjoy life in this state, I do on both side of the Cascades, but I prefer the
beauty that is Spokane than the
busy-bee expensive life of
Sea-Tac, the name of the airport but
in reality the extent that both cities expanded and
melded into one giant strip of humanity in just 3 decades. I hope my 10 years of combined living here experience helps you make a good move to find out
for yourself if
WA is your kind of
CC pistol friendly/
owner-smart state......and which part suit your life-style/needs.
Regards,
Canis-Lupus :bier: