A Washington state gun rights activist, waging something of a one-man campaign to make government agencies conform with the state's fairly liberal firearms laws, has apparently scored an unusual victory by having a suburban police department issue a training directive affirming that open carry is legal in the Evergreen State.  

Lonnie Wilson of Federal Way, a suburban community located between Seattle and Tacoma, has been active for years, challenging gun "bans" on transit buses, because under state law, licensed private citizens can carry firearms on buses.  It is also legal to bring cased, unloaded long guns on buses.

His most recent foray, though, was in his own city, where he has been working "off and on" to clarify the parameters of open carry in the Evergreen State.  Federal Way was the city that produced the so-called test case of open carry, State v. Spencer, several years ago.  In that case, a man named Randolph Spencer was arrested by a Federal Way police officer for carrying a fully-loaded AK-47 rifle over his shoulder one night while walking his dog.  At the time, Spencer also was carrying a legally-concealed .45-caliber pistol.

Spencer claimed a defense based on the state constitutional right to bear arms, and he challenged the constitutionality of a 1969 statute that makes it unlawful for any person to "carry, exhibit, display, or draw any firearm, dagger, sword, knife or other cutting or stabbing instrument, club, or any other weapon apparently capable of producing bodily harm, in a manner, under circumstances, and at a time and place that either manifests an intent to intimidate another or that warrants alarm for the safety of other persons."

That statute was passed apparently in reaction to concerns among lawmakers at the time that the militant Black Panthers might stage a demonstration in Olympia by showing up, openly carrying firearms, as had happened in Sacramento, CA.

Spencer was convicted, and his conviction was upheld by the state Court of Appeals in 1994.  The state Supreme Court declined to take the case, allowing the conviction to stand.