Washington gun buyers will pay $126 for permission to shop — before they spend a dollar on training, ammunition or range time. The Washington State Patrol confirmed the fee to AmmoLand News, breaking it into $90 for a five-year permit and $36 for the fingerprint-based background check. The requirement, written into state law as RCW 9.41.121 and signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson in May 2025, takes effect May 1, 2027 — and it lands on dealers as heavily as it lands on buyers.
Here is what the permit regime actually costs, what it changes at the counter, and where the legal fight is headed.
Start with the numbers, because the rollout has produced few of them. A new permit runs $126. Renewal runs $90 every five years, and replacing an expired permit costs the full $126 again under the published state schedule. Renewals filed more than 90 days after expiration add a $25 late fee.
The National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action notes the fee came in at more than double what the State Patrol estimated in testimony before lawmakers, and argues the permit amounts to a state registry of gun owners. Supporters, including the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, frame it as a safety measure, and Gov. Ferguson called the bill common sense when he signed it.
Either way the arithmetic is public. The State Patrol expects roughly 200,000 applications in the first full year, which at $126 each is about $25.2 million coming out of buyers' pockets, against a projected program cost of a little over $20 million for the 2027-29 budget cycle.
It also stacks on top of an existing pile. Reporting on the new fee lists what Washington already requires: universal background checks, a ten-day waiting period, a concealed pistol license, a red flag law, storage mandates, an assault weapons ban, a magazine ban and a registry of handgun sales.
The $126 buys nothing but permission. Applicants must first complete a state-certified safety course taken within the previous five years. The State Patrol will not teach it or write the curriculum — private instructors do, with approved providers posted on the state's Get a Permit WA portal.
That curriculum is not trivial. It must cover safe storage, suicide prevention, state and federal firearms law and the use of deadly force, and it must include live fire on a range. Course fees, ammunition, range time and travel all come out of the buyer's pocket. For a shooter on a fixed income, the permit plus a class plus a box of ammunition can easily double the real cost of a first handgun.
Two common assumptions fail here. A Washington concealed pistol license does not satisfy the permit requirement, and neither does a hunting license. CPL holders must also complete a certified course to obtain or renew a license beginning May 1, 2027.
This is the part licensed dealers should be planning for now. Beginning May 1, 2027, state law bars a dealer from delivering a firearm unless the buyer holds a valid permit, has cleared the state background-check program and has satisfied the waiting-period requirements. Buyers should also expect a second background check at the point of purchase.
Practically, every transfer — retail sale, online order or private transfer through a shop — picks up a document check before the Form 4473 work even starts. Dealers should build permit verification into intake, train counter staff to read expiration dates, and document every refusal. If you are buying through a shop in the state, start with one you have already vetted: find an FFL dealer in Washington before you commit to a transfer. If you are buying out of state, line up an FFL transfer dealer near you long before the item ships.
No court challenge is pending today, and that is by design. Under standing rules, Second Amendment groups generally need a plaintiff who has actually been harmed by a law, which means suits are expected after the rules take effect rather than before. Franklin County Sheriff Jim Raymond told The Center Square he believes the requirement is unconstitutional and predicted a constitutional fight once the mandate bites.
When it comes, expect that case to run parallel to the Justice Department's suit against Minnesota over its permit-to-purchase law and waiting periods — a fight that turns on whether a permit is a condition of a right or a bureaucratic fee layered on top of it. Long permit queues are already a documented failure mode elsewhere, as the DOJ investigation into permit delays in Pennsauken, New Jersey shows.
Buyers who know what they want should buy before the deadline. Nothing in the 2025 law reaches a purchase completed before May 1, 2027, and pre-deadline demand ahead of a permit mandate historically runs above normal. The harder question is how many marginal buyers simply stop. Shermichael Singleton, co-founder of the streaming network We the Free TV, told Seattle radio host Jason Rantz on the Jason Rantz Show that the people squeezed hardest by a couple hundred dollars of new cost are the working households already stretching every dollar for self-defense.
Then there is the compounding effect. The same blueprint keeps spreading, state by state, layering permits, fees and delays onto a right most sheriffs can verify in minutes — the pattern we have tracked across the permit regimes built in other states. Paperwork and price rise; the underlying crime problem stays where it was.
None of this requires panic. It requires a calendar. Mark May 1, 2027, know what the permit costs in both money and hours, and if you are a Washington buyer or a dealer serving one, get training and paperwork aligned long before the first customer walks in without a permit.