I-1639, a gun control initiative, is back on the ballot in Washington state after the state supreme court ruled that the law “does not allow for pre-election judicial review of the form, process, substance, or constitutionality of an initiative petition.”

Gun store owners in Washington are now concerned about what that means for the future.

The Washington State Supreme Court late Friday afternoon reversed a Thurston County judge’s decision, which has cleared the way for a gun-control initiative to appear on the November ballot.

Sharp Shooting gun store owner Robin Ball says this decision is going to have impacts.

“It reduces access for people going out and hunting and wanting to buy something new,” said Ball.

Ball says the initiative will limit the sales of long guns across state lines which could end up hurting businesses like hers.

“We work a lot with Idaho residents on long guns, and that will no longer be allowed under this,” said Ball. “So it is kind of a business killer for those of us in border communities.”

They’re not wrong to be concerned. Any gun control law will have an impact.

As I-1639 will also raise the age limit for purchasing long guns to 21, it’ll also artificially shrink the stores’ potential market by a significant degree. All this despite no real evidence that people age 18-20 are any less responsible or any less law-abiding with rifles than people over 21.

Then again, it’s not like gun control laws are ever really about keeping people safe. As Derek Hunter notes over at Townhall:

After every mass shooting, for example, Democrats reach in their desk drawers and pull out their standard gun control wish list. Buzzwords like “background checks,” “gun show loopholes,” and all the words we’ve come to hear far too often hit the cable news airwaves along with the inevitable “we must do somethings” that accompany them.

Yet after each of these horrible events this ballet plays out with the ultimate reality that none of these proposed “solutions” would have prevented what they are allegedly in reaction to admitted by its advocates.

So why propose a response to something that not only would not have prevented the tragedy, but would also do nothing to prevent a similar event in the future? Because Democrats want to, ultimately, repeal the Second Amendment. They know they can’t do it all at once; incrementalism has always been the left’s tactic. If they have to exploit a tragedy to move the ball in their direction, they are more than happy to do it.

I-1639 is pretty much exactly that. There’s no evidence to suggest that I-1639 will make anyone safer. Not really. People will point to Parkland, but they forget that just because the killer used a long gun, it doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have found some alternative if he’d been barred from getting one. Crime as a whole, however, won’t stop or even drop with a law like this.

But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about slowly peeling back the layers of gun rights in this country until they don’t exist anymore.

I-1639 should worry gun store owners, if for no other reason than it’s just another harbinger of what they want in the long term, and that would be for gun stores to no longer exist.