By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
While gun control Measure 114 remains locked up in a court fight, Oregon anti-gunners are hedging their bets in Salem by moving more gun control legislation, passing Senate Bill 348 out of the Senate Judiciary Committee along a party line vote.
According to KGW News in Portland, SB 348 “would raise the minimum age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21, with some exceptions for hunting rifles and shotguns.” The report acknowledged SB 348 “reflects parts of Measure 114,” including the ban on so-called “high-capacity magazines” and the “permit-to-purchase” requirement, although the bill would postpone the requirement until July 2024.
But perhaps the most controversial feature in the bill is a provision that any court challenges to Measure 114 would have to be filed in Marion County, which encompasses Salem and the state capital. KGW quotes Constitutional Law Professor Norman Williams at Willamette University’s College of Law. He suggested the motivation behind this suggested requirement is to “centralize any challenges to the constitutionality of the measure in Marion County so as to stop judges in other counties … from hearing a challenge to the law.”
However, that bridge has already been crossed with the court filing in Harney County, in eastern Oregon. There, the court has put a hold on Measure 114.
The Oregon Firearms Federation (OFF) reports on its website that state Sen. Floyd Prozanski has introduced proposed amendments to SB 393, which would add a 72-hour waiting period to a gun purchase.
“But the truly inexplicable part, and something no one questioned, was why having to wait 72 hours would reduce dangerous impulses any more than the 8 to 12 months a person already had to wait under SB 348,” the OFF alert states.
A third piece of legislation is House Bill 2005, which “strips young adults of their right to own modern firearms, bans personally manufactured firearms, and places vast and unspecified areas of Oregon off limits to CHL holders,” OFF asserts in its statement.
OregonLive.com is reporting that the Joint ways and Means Subcommittee on Public Safety voted 5-3 to “send an amended (version)” of HB 2005 to the full Ways and Means Committee. This legislation would make it illegal to “manufacture, sell or possess” an unserialized firearm—generically dubbed “ghost guns” because they allegedly cannot be traced by the authorities—while also prohibiting people under age 21 from having guns, with exceptions for “certain hunting rifles.” It would also prohibit the carrying of firearms in “public buildings or on adjacent grounds.”
“These bills combined will essentially end Second Amendment rights in Oregon,” according to OFF.
