Although Oregon is solidly in Democrat control and its citizens passed one of the most restrictive gun-control laws in the country last year, citizen rights and the Constitution are keeping that law from being enforced.
Ballot Measure 114, which is misleadingly called the Reduction of Gun Violence Act, would not reduce gun violence. But it will infringe on rights and turn law-abiding citizens into criminals. Not to mention, it would violate the Second Amendment.
The legislation will require background checks (Oregon already does this), firearm training, fingerprint collection, and a permit to purchase any firearm. It will cost $49 million a year to start, and it will put 300,000 residents into a gun owner database, according to Fox News.
Luckily, the law can’t be enforced. The Oregon Supreme Court recently denied a petition to overturn a lower court ruling that temporarily restrained the measure. The opinion shows that the justice decided the issue should rest in the hands of the lower courts for now.
While this is good news, the decision does not guarantee that the law will not go into effect. “Our decision today does not serve as a bar to any future challenge in this court or otherwise on appeal. Rather, at this juncture, and given our understanding that the trial court is proceeding as expeditiously as possible to resolve the issues that the parties have presented, we have determined that we should decline to exercise our mandamus discretion at this time,” noted the opinion.
This is the second time the Oregon Supreme Court has delayed the new law. Last December, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum requested the hold on the law be removed, which would have overturned a lower court’s ruling.
After the most recent denial, Rosenblum said, “We intend to continue to defend the law zealously in the Harney County court. My office takes the position the law passed by Oregonians last November is totally proper and legal under the U.S. and Oregon constitutions.”
She acts as if the law is something that Oregonians overwhelmingly wanted, but the law passed by a slim margin. It quickly faced challenges from organizations like the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the Oregon State Shooting Association, Mazama Sporting Good, and the Oregon Firearms Federation.
“This is the most extreme gun control measure in the country, or at least one of the most extreme. It will virtually eliminate firearm sales in Oregon as written,” Oregon State Shooting Association President Kerry Spurgin said.
Rosenblum has tried scare tactics, claiming people will die if it isn’t enacted. Restricting access to guns only encourages criminals because they know that fewer potential victims will be armed.
“This measure will not make our community safer. It will put our communities at greater risk for violence because it requires that every sheriff’s office and police agency divert scarce public safety resources to background systems that already exist,” Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson told Fox News.
If the law should be enforced, a lot of innocent gun owners will find themselves labeled as criminals. It is the left’s way of ignoring true crime and law- abiding citizens as offenders.
We can only hope, should all the state legal challenges fail, that the U.S. Supreme Court will defend against this blatant attack on the Constitution.
