The price of a high-capacity magazine in Washington: Today So Far

• Washington's Attorney General's Office is targeting these gun stores.
• Sen. Patty Murray says Senate Democrats now have breathing room.
• Did Seattle landlords break the law when they all used the same software (which ended up inflating rent prices)?

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for December 9, 2022.

Washington's state Legislature passed a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines earlier this year. Some gun stores don't seem to care about that law.

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed a lawsuit against a Federal Way gun store that has refused to stop selling high-capacity magazines (which hold more than 10 rounds). The AG's office says it is investigating a second store, too.

In the case of the Federal Way store — Federal Way Discount Guns and Indoor Range — Ferguson says store employees, and its owner, attempted to hide the sales. For example, they wouldn't issue receipts for the magazine sales.

"They literally tore them up and put them in the trash can. In one case it was the owner of the business that did that...and so they understood what they were doing — these were quite out in the open. It was brazen to be honest with you, and they sold numerous high-capacity magazines, including one up to 50 rounds."

The store could be fined up to $7,500 for each high-capacity magazine it sold, or each time one was offered at the store.

Read the full story here.

"Breathing room." That's what Washington Senator Patty Murray says Democrats now have in the Senate after Georgia's runoff election concluded. Georgia's election favored Raphael Warnock, which means Democrats have a 51-49 Senate majority.

Sen. Murray tells Soundside that the majority will make it easier "to pass legislation, to get nominees through, and be able to do it in a more expedited manner than we have been for the last two years."

Of course, that statement was made before Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's announcement today that she is leaving the Democratic Party.

You may have heard that Seattle landlords have been collectively inflating rents over the past few years. Well, this is a sort of "yes and no" situation. As UW Professor Douglas Ross tells Soundside, there's the way things have played out (rents consistently rising), and there's what can be proven in court.

It all comes down to this: A company called RealPage has software that a lot of landlords and rental companies use across the United States, including in our region. The landlords share what they charge for rent, and the software comes up with price recommendations. After the software's algorithm kicks in, prices seem to go up. I'm sure somebody is using "market rate" somewhere in all this.

Question: Are the landlords colluding with each other to set rent prices if they are all using the same third-party software? Technically, they are not talking directly to each other, which is something that the USA's Sherman Act says is a no-no. There are a handful of lawsuits now that aim to answer that question. This also appears to be yet another example of our technology evolving beyond our laws.

"For a number of years, people have been warning that as we move into having more and more reliance on algorithms, that the possibility for price fixing, without human intervention, is out there," Professor Ross told Soundside. "This is one of the very first concrete examples."

AS SEEN ON KUOW

Outdoor cat Cleocatra swats at a songbird, one of three that she killed on a single day in June 2021. All sorts of human-introduced hazards can land wild animals in a hospital — or dead. One of the biggest manglers and killers of wildlife is the domesticated cat. (Isolde Raftery / KUOW)

DID YOU KNOW?: Upside-down Christmas trees are a thing

Apparently, upside-down Christmas trees have been all the rage in recent years, at least, they have been for those seeking to be on the cutting edge of chic holiday fashion. This upside-down tradition actually goes back hundreds of years throughout Eastern Europe where back-in-the-day Christians started hanging the trees as such to symbolize the trinity. Not sure exactly how a topsy-turvy tree symbolizes that, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. It's a tradition that didn't spread too widely to other Christmas cultures, but has kept going in some pockets. Over the past few years, it seems some pockets of social media keep the upside-down trend alive — hang the tree from the ceiling and decorate it. Not sure how you're supposed to get the presents to stay up there though.

ALSO ON OUR MINDS

South Koreans are getting a year younger, parliament rules

You're not getting any younger — unless you live in South Korea. South Koreans will soon become a year or two younger, following an official change to the country's age-counting system.

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