The regulation prohibiting snap traps for moles, but oddly not for rats, was an unfortunate error
I am convinced Initiative 713 did not ban trapping moles. I personally continue to use mole traps. I don't necessarily recommend others do so, however, because we live in a state that elects people who love throwing their weight around, and it will take significant legal trouble to fend them off if they come after you.
The background on this is that Christine Gregoire, when she was the attorney general, released an *unofficial* opinion that it did in response to a question (the same attorney general, by the way, who forbid state firefighters from assisting at the Oso mudslide search and rescue because in a similar opinion she ruled that the term "natural disasters" in the state laws restricting the use of state firefighting funds, meant "fires, and only fires."). As a result, the state started pressing charges against mole trap users, and nobody has really tried to challenge it.
Note that the attorney general does not have actual authority to interpret the law. They have discretion in prosecuting according to their understanding of the law, but the actual authority lies with the courts, who have a duty to correct them when they are wrong.
The first problem is the ambiguities in the definitions of body grasping and both the contradictions between the attorney general's interpretation and the intent of the law to prevent indiscriminate (being underground with the exposed, non-grasping part easily covered, mole traps are very discriminate) and cruel traps (mole traps generally kill quickly), and the contradiction between the definition of grasping and the explicit exemption of mouse and rat traps, pests of a similar nature to moles. The initiative established violation as a crime, not merely an infraction, which means a conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Those ambiguities and contradictions do not allow such proof.
The bigger problem is that is not permissible to ignore legislative intent when interpreting a law (King v. Burwell, upholding the Affordable Care Act re-affirmed this fact in the Supreme Court), and in this case, leaves no doubt that mole traps are not to be banned by the law. The legislative body in this case, the voters who passed the initiative, were explicitly told in the voters pamphlet, "1-713 allows body-gripping traps to protect public health and safety, property, livestock, and endangered species. It doesn't ban trapping of moles, gophers, mice, or rats- animals not trapped for fur." On that basis, even a non-criminal infraction wouldn't stick, because the preponderance of evidence is that the voters intended for the law to allow mole trapping.
