Oregon Get ready for April 2nd. OFF says hearing on Firearm bills coming.

[ROC]

I made this to send to a friend who is Pro 2A and unaware of SB978. Thought I would post it and maybe help inform/involve others.

Link to a summary of the proposed new laws from OFF - http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com ... 07a9ef192f

Full text of SB978, proposed changes to the law are in bold - https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1 ... ment/14732

Where to send written testimony, deadline is 5pm tomorrow. I pasted this into the destination address of my email and it worked, took about 24 hours to show up and for the state to send a confirmation that they had received it. - [email protected]

Page with testimony received so far. - SB978 2019 Regular Session - https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1 ... its/SB978#

Members of the senate judiciary committee to call are here. Per OFF " Kim Thatcher, Cliff Bentz and Dennis Linthicum. The rest are opposed to your rights." - https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1 ... D/Overview


Please feel free to add to this and share it.

- Rocky

 

[dancinghippos]

More ideas for letters:

Deaths from mass shootings get all the headlines, but they are extremely rare compared to other violent crime, even now. There have been 1135 mass shooting deaths since 1966 (Washington Post, October 2018). This is an average of 21 victims per year.

That is tragic, but by comparison, we have much larger problems demanding our attention that do not harm Oregonians who already obey laws. Numbers do not lie. Let's examine some.

The US Government "national gang center" website shows the results of the National Youth Gang Survey of 2012. They show an average of 2000 gang-related murders per year. That is almost 100 times the annual average of mass shooting deaths.

The US Government ice.gov website contains annual "Enforcement and Removal Operations" (ERO) reports enumerating criminal convictions and charges against people whom they removed from the US.

The FY 2018 ERO enumerates 2028 homicides, 2085 kidnappings, 5350 sexual assaults, 8627 non-assault sexual offenses, 5562 robberies, 12,663 burglaries, 6261 stolen vehicles, 50,753 assaults, 11,766 weapons offenses, 20,340 larcenies, 76,585 drug offenses, and 80,730 DUI. This is ONE YEAR of deportees. The FY2017 report shows similar numbers for the 2017 deportees. Reports for previous years, also shown on the ICE website, contain similar numbers of criminal deportations with fewer details of the exact offenses.

We see that mass shooting homicides represent under ½ of 1% of homicides due to gang activity and crime from people illegally here. Accidental gun deaths are a similarly miniscule percentage. Again, numbers do not lie. Please do not spend most of your political efforts on a small percentage of the problem. For immediate school protection, it would be faster and more effective to add security staff in our schools.

For longer term protection, it would be more effective to focus on the larger sources of the violence. That is gang enforcement and background checks on people who enter our country before they arrive. People already violating laws will not be deterred by new gun laws.

I also feel that there are "root causes" of the isolation and anger in our society that allow disaffected youth to choose violence in any form. Addressing those issues will bear more fruit than gun laws.

 

[dancinghippos]

Violence against "out of favor" groups like LGBTQ, racial minorities and other groups still happen in modern day Oregon. It has been like that in all of history. People who ignore laws against random violence are not inclined to obey gun laws. Only their intended victims obey gun laws. So I must ask what the real benefit of these laws you say will make us "safe".

If reducing crime is the reason for new gun legislation, how about consulting real experts? Ask street level police officers, not chiefs or political appointees who must "agree" with a mayor. I have. Every police officer I know or have asked since 1994 have said that more gun laws do little to affect crime. They affect people who obey the law, but not people who don't. Two popular police organizations recently polled their membership. These are the results:

In 2016, The National Association of Chiefs of Police polled 20,000 police officers and sheriffs. 76% said that armed citizens help law enforcement reduce violent crime. This links to their survey results

https://crimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/NACOP-surveyresults-2016.pdf

PoliceOne, an organization of about 380,000 active and 70,000 retired officers, surveyed 16,000 members on gun control policies in 2013.
71% of respondents said that a ban on so-called "assault weapons" would have no effect on violent crime. 20% of the respondents said it would make crime worse. This is a link to their results
http://ddq74coujkv1i.cloudfront.net/p1_gunsurveysummary_2013.pdf

Police are the experts on guns and crime. These are the experts to believe. Law enforcement officers know more about crime and violence than any other group, and they overwhelmingly oppose these kinds of gun laws.

When professional organizations poll Americans, they poll 1000-2000 people and extrapolate to 320 Million. These two polls were 20,000 and 16,000 officers respectively. They extrapolate to around 900,000 sworn state, local and federal officers. So the confidence level is higher than any normal public polling data.

 

[arakboss]

Violence against "out of favor" groups like LGBTQ, racial minorities and other groups still happen in modern day Oregon. It has been like that in all of history. People who ignore laws against random violence are not inclined to obey gun laws. Only their intended victims obey gun laws. So I must ask what the real benefit of these laws you say will make us "safe".

If reducing crime is the reason for new gun legislation, how about consulting real experts? Ask street level police officers, not chiefs or political appointees who must "agree" with a mayor. I have. Every police officer I know or have asked since 1994 have said that more gun laws do little to affect crime. They affect people who obey the law, but not people who don't. Two popular police organizations recently polled their membership. These are the results:

In 2016, The National Association of Chiefs of Police polled 20,000 police officers and sheriffs. 76% said that armed citizens help law enforcement reduce violent crime. This links to their survey results

https://crimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/NACOP-surveyresults-2016.pdf

PoliceOne, an organization of about 380,000 active and 70,000 retired officers, surveyed 16,000 members on gun control policies in 2013.
71% of respondents said that a ban on so-called "assault weapons" would have no effect on violent crime. 20% of the respondents said it would make crime worse. This is a link to their results
http://ddq74coujkv1i.cloudfront.net/p1_gunsurveysummary_2013.pdf

Police are the experts on guns and crime. These are the experts to believe. Law enforcement officers know more about crime and violence than any other group, and they overwhelmingly oppose these kinds of gun laws.

When professional organizations poll Americans, they poll 1000-2000 people and extrapolate to 320 Million. These two polls were 20,000 and 16,000 officers respectively. They extrapolate to around 900,000 sworn state, local and federal officers. So the confidence level is higher than any normal public polling data.

Have you already submitted this info to senate committee?

 

[arakboss]

Two out of three Marion County Commissioners get it!

 

[3MTA3]

People who owned slaves felt every bit as justified in removing the civil rights of blacks. It's no different than the self justification of the politicians and activists that are more than happy to take civil rights away from gun owners. The right to bear arms is the Natural Right to protect yourself, family, loved ones, others, and your country and every bit as important as the Natural Right to be Free.

 

[arakboss]

People who owned slaves felt every bit as justified in removing the civil rights of blacks. It's no different than the self justification of the politicians and activists that are more than happy to take civil rights away from gun owners. The right to bear arms is the Natural Right to protect yourself, family, loved ones, others, and your country and every bit as important as the Natural Right to be Free.

There was an article in the Oregonian recently (maybe Tue) with news on Gun Control bills. The last paragraph said this about House Bills that they are keeping alive just in case:

We don't know if we're going to need some of those later on," House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, said Monday.

I imagine since SB 978 contained a lot of what was in those House Bills they won't need to pass those other bills, but if the Senate fails to pass SB 978 than they will have the other bills waiting in the wings. So our work is going to be long and arduous

Source for full article: Oregon may expand gun-free zones, raise gun buying age
BTW @tiggers97 I saw some of your comments over at oregonlive

 

[bunnybunny]

The gun free zone I find particularly troubling for when it comes to schools.
First there is nothing that requires schools to have a "no guns" sign, so I can't know which schools have passed these rules and which haven't, since the law only gives them the option of declaring themselves a gun free zone. Second the property aspect makes no exemption for people traveling in commercial vehicles or public transit through an unknown self declared school gun free zone. The North-South Portland street car cuts through Portland state. PSU also cuts the city in half for around 8 blocks, so traveling through those streets would be a class C felony the way I am reading the law. The gun free zone is bad enough, but there is a gotcha aspect to this proposed rule change that is particularly egregious. Compared this to the current court house gun free zone rule, where is very obvious you can't bring a gun in, and almost impossible to violate the law since there is security and metal detectors that prevent you from violating the law in the first place.

 

[Nick Burkhardt]

The gun free zone I find particularly troubling for when it comes to schools.
First there is nothing that requires schools to have a "no guns" sign, so I can't know which schools have passed these rules and which haven't, since the law only gives them the option of declaring themselves a gun free zone. Second the property aspect makes no exemption for people traveling in commercial vehicles or public transit through an unknown self declared school gun free zone. The North-South Portland street car cuts through Portland state. PSU also cuts the city in half for around 8 blocks, so traveling through those streets would be a class C felony the way I am reading the law. The gun free zone is bad enough, but there is a gotcha aspect to this proposed rule change that is particularly egregious. Compared this to the current court house gun free zone rule, where is very obvious you can't bring a gun in, and almost impossible to violate the law since there is security and metal detectors that prevent you from violating the law in the first place.

Open youR email, cut the above, paste, state your name, city and 4/4/2019 at the bottom, add Subject:
TESTIMONY FOR SB978, and send to

[email protected]

DO IT NOW!

 

[bunnybunny]

Open youR email, cut the above, paste, state your name, city and 4/4/2019 at the bottom, add Subject:
TESTIMONY FOR SB978, and send to

[email protected]

DO IT NOW!

Done

 

[bunnybunny]

The ironic this is if this bill does become law and I do carry at school and decide the risk is worth it (not saying I will), then I'll carry an 80% Glock milled to 100% because a class A misdemeanor on top of a felony doesn't really matter. If someone stole my bag at school then the gun couldn't be traced back to me.

This is all hypothetical but I've put some thought into it

 

[arakboss]

The gun free zone I find particularly troubling for when it comes to schools.
First there is nothing that requires schools to have a "no guns" sign, so I can't know which schools have passed these rules and which haven't, since the law only gives them the option of declaring themselves a gun free zone. Second the property aspect makes no exemption for people traveling in commercial vehicles or public transit through an unknown self declared school gun free zone. The North-South Portland street car cuts through Portland state. PSU also cuts the city in half for around 8 blocks, so traveling through those streets would be a class C felony the way I am reading the law. The gun free zone is bad enough, but there is a gotcha aspect to this proposed rule change that is particularly egregious. Compared this to the current court house gun free zone rule, where is very obvious you can't bring a gun in, and almost impossible to violate the law since there is security and metal detectors that prevent you from violating the law in the first place.

Great points, I hope you sent them in.

 

[bunnybunny]

Great points, I hope you sent them in.

I did, I also included:

I would hope the legislature makes proper amendments to SB-978 so that it doesn't not entrap tax paying, law abiding citizens and turn them into felons for unknowingly violating gun free zones that are impossible to differentiate between. This bill lays the groundwork for harming good people on pure technicalities instead of targeting criminals.

SB-978 is pretty bad to begin with, but I would hope we can at least convince democrats to make some of these rules crystal clear. The way the law is currently written, they would be better off making all schools gun free zones, because then I would at least know where I can and can't carry. We also do not have force of law signs in these gun free zones, so there is no way to differentiate what is and isn't an acceptable carry zone. This is pretty unusual in many states that have shall-issue as the law of the land.

 

[arakboss]

I did, I also included:



SB-978 is pretty bad to begin with, but I would hope we can at least convince democrats to make some of these rules crystal clear. The way the law is currently written, they would be better off making all schools gun free zones, because then I would at least know where I can and can't carry. We also do not have force of law signs in these gun free zones, so there is no way to differentiate what is and isn't an acceptable carry zone. This is pretty unusual in many states that have shall-issue as the law of the land.

Goob job, that was a great write up. I wished I would have address the point about signage in my testimony. It will still be a nightmare figuring out where you can and can't carry with out subjecting yourself to a felony.

I will be sending a revised version of my testimony to all of the committee members tomorrow. It looks like the committee vote would be Monday. I am going to try and leave work early Sunday morning so I can make in person stops at their offices as well ahead of there vote. I am hoping many others will email and/or visit them too.