Sportsmen’s Alliance Vindicated with Release of Washington Fish & Wildlife Commission Report

August 7, 2026
8:43 am

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The Washington Fish & Wildlife Commission just got caught red-handed doing exactly what Sportsmen’s Alliance said they were doing—playing fast and loose with the law to tilt the table against hunters. An independent investigation confirmed that commissioners Barbara Baker, Lorna Smith, Melanie Rowland, and John Lehmkuhl violated both the Public Records Act and the Open Public Meetings Act, colluding with anti-hunting activists while freezing out the very sportsmen whose license dollars fund the agency. That’s not just bad optics; it’s a textbook case of regulatory capture, where the people entrusted with managing wildlife for all users instead weaponize their authority to advance a narrow, anti-hunting agenda. For the 2A community, this isn’t some isolated bureaucratic scandal—it’s a warning shot. When unelected commissioners can secretly coordinate with outside activists, ignore transparency laws, and mistreat staff who refuse to play along, the Second Amendment’s promise of an armed citizenry able to hunt and defend itself starts to erode from the inside out. License fees, Pittman-Robertson dollars, and the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation all depend on the assumption that state agencies will remain accountable to the people who actually pay for and participate in the system. Once that trust is broken, every restriction on methods of take, every shortened season, and every back-door policy pushed through closed-door meetings becomes suspect. The real takeaway is that vigilance can’t stop at the range or the ballot box; it has to extend to the commission chambers where the rules are written. Sportsmen’s Alliance proved that persistent records requests and public pressure can force sunlight into even the most opaque corners of state government. Other states should take note: the same playbook—collusion, selective enforcement, and disdain for the hunting public—can appear anywhere the guardrails of transparency are allowed to rust. If the 2A community wants to keep its hard-won access to the field, it needs to treat wildlife commissions with the same scrutiny it applies to ATF rulemakings and congressional gun-control packages.

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For the 2A community, this isn’t some isolated bureaucratic scandal—it’s a warning shot. When unelected commissioners can secretly coordinate with outside activists, ignore transparency laws, and mistreat staff who refuse to play along, the Second Amendment’s promise of an armed citizenry able to hunt and defend itself starts to erode from the inside out. License fees, Pittman-Robertson dollars, and the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation all depend on the assumption that state agencies will remain accountable to the people who actually pay for and participate in the system. Once that trust is broken, every restriction on methods of take, every shortened season, and every back-door policy pushed through closed-door meetings becomes suspect.

The real takeaway is that vigilance can’t stop at the range or the ballot box; it has to extend to the commission chambers where the rules are written. Sportsmen’s Alliance proved that persistent records requests and public pressure can force sunlight into even the most opaque corners of state government. Other states should take note: the same playbook—collusion, selective enforcement, and disdain for the hunting public—can appear anywhere the guardrails of transparency are allowed to rust. If the 2A community wants to keep its hard-won access to the field, it needs to treat wildlife commissions with the same scrutiny it applies to ATF rulemakings and congressional gun-control packages.

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