
Does Washington's Constitution Ban Armed Militias?
In 1888, a confrontation in the coal-mining town of Roslyn, in Kittitas County, just east of the Cascade crest, helped shape the Washington state constitution. The incident, a small chapter in a longer narrative of regional tumult, involved union laborers, strikebreakers, hired railroad guards armed with weapons and violent clashes over race. And all of that led to Washington's constitutional ban on armed militias.