Senator Ron Wayden's response to my letter

[CharonPDX]

One pedantic language observation - Wyden says "responsibility" not "requirement". Just as we have a "responsibility" to vote, not a requirement. Could be meant as "requirement," but I've heard him speak before - he tends to choose his words very carefully. Sounds like a VERY fine line, and he's trying his damndest to stay every-so-barely on the correct side of that line.

He does have a town hall this weekend that I will be going to - I'll try to get him to clarify which side of that line the wording is meant to be.

 

[DieselScout]

Soooo....all that "Write your senators now! Let them know how you feel! Be proactive!" Is it really gonna work? Do they really care that we write to them? All those pre-written responses seems a bit disingenuous don't they?

Regardless of weather you voted for them or not, they are your representative to the US federal government, so how else are they suppose to know how you feel? Form letters is how it works, and everyone get them regardless if you agree with their position or not. I once wrote (actually wrote pen and paper) Gordon Smith regarding stem cell research and initially got a form letter back. Months later as his term ended, I got a letter from him way more personal and directed toward the letter I wrote him. It was even signed with a real pen. Now was it him, his secretary or an auto-pen that signed it I don't know, but it was beyond a form letter.

A form letter is what I expect to get back from them, but it doesn't mean I am going to stop and it shouldn't stop anyone either. Already we're seeing two different version of the same letter, so either he's changing his position or seeing the winds aren't exactly blowing as he thought and attempting to appease his voters.

 

[CounterOfBeans]

OK, I see "thereddog" and "jordanvraptor" have taken issue with Wyden's reference to "licensed" individuals. I know Father of four,.... here I go again... I've put some effort on other threads into pulling back the carpet on the whole notion of "licensing" a right. But I see enough unfamiliar names on this thread that I'll throw a little of it on the wall here and see if it sticks.

Even though a lot of us bish and moan about the absurd effects and inconveniences and privacy invasions that go along with a world where "licensing" goes hand in hand as a pre-condition with being able to fully enjoy and exercise our gun rights, most of us have pretty much come to grudgingly accept the central idea that "licensing" the exercise of a "right" is valid... right? Well, maybe at least until we can see a law that confirms our intuition that it's BS.

But as a nation founded on "the rule of law", how much opportunity have we been given to learn about the law or even the essential basics of knowing how to properly read the law so we accurately understand what the legislature intends by it? Just a little more than squat right? So I'll just cut to the chase. Below is the general- application, lawful definition of "license" in the Oregon Revised Statutes:

"ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES ACT
(General Provisions)

183.310 Definitions for chapter. As used in this chapter:
(5) "License" includes the whole or part of any agency permit, certificate, approval, registration or similar form of permission required by law to pursue any commercial activity, trade, occupation or profession."

The Administrative Procedures Act (Chapter 183 in the Oregon Revised Statutes) is not a single law. It is a body of law. It's a body of law that controls how executive branch agencies perform their lawful duties of administrating or enforcing the legislative intent of the law. Notice how our legislators defined "license" to embrace only the pursuit of commercial activities. Is the exercise of a right....a commercial activity (especially a right that has no conditions placed upon its exercise by the Oregon Constitution at Article 1, Section 27)? Can the whole modern reality of our rights being subjected to "licensing" be a fraud that is simply dumped on its head with this one simple "law"? It seems likely, especially when you take ORS 174.030 into account:

"CONSTRUCTION OF STATUTES
174.030 Construction favoring natural right to prevail. Where a statute is equally susceptible of two interpretations, one in favor of natural right and the other against it, the former is to prevail."

Thoughts???

 

[Sodbuster]

Throughout history, what happened to the folks with mental/physical illness in countries that had been disarmed?
Might remind these dudes about what happened in Germany. The Nazi's disarmed the people and then murdered everyone that fits in the above category.
We have fascists running the show now.

Same thing happened in Stalinist Russia. Except it wasn't the "mental defectives" alone. Most of the previous intelligencia class was imprisoned and died there or were killed outright. Millions upon millions were killed. And no ONE to stop them since Stalin was not crazy enough to start a war.

 

[trekkerpaul]

They are going to do what they want. They will, if nothing else, use the Sandy Hook tragedy as a way to invade our personal lives more than they already do. They will take little steps now that we can live with or at least deal with and then move forward with the larger goal of seizing our firearms later. This is not a new plan. I am profoundly sad that our government thinks they have the right to take our constitutionally protected rights and 'interpret' them to meet their own agendas.

 

[Fitzwilly]

"Unlicensed individuals"

Wyden has been living in New York too long...

When I read the SECOND AMMENDMENT I fail to see any "Licensing Requirement" for gun ownership. Gun ownership is not a privilege, and doesn't require licensing guidlines like say, Driving a Motor Vehicle, or Flying an Airplane.

Gun ownership under the SECOND AMMENDMENT is a RIGHT. And as horrified as I am by the Sandy Hook Tragedy, the menace was not the "Gun". The monster who was responsible for this carnage was a mentally deranged 20 year old named ADAM LANZA. And if the tool of destruction wasn't a gun, it would have been explosives, arson, or an axe. Possibly even a motor vehicle.

 

[MikeE]

Regardless of weather you voted for them or not, they are your representative to the US federal government, so how else are they suppose to know how you feel? Form letters is how it works, and everyone get them regardless if you agree with their position or not. I once wrote (actually wrote pen and paper) Gordon Smith regarding stem cell research and initially got a form letter back. Months later as his term ended, I got a letter from him way more personal and directed toward the letter I wrote him. It was even signed with a real pen. Now was it him, his secretary or an auto-pen that signed it I don't know, but it was beyond a form letter.

A form letter is what I expect to get back from them, but it doesn't mean I am going to stop and it shouldn't stop anyone either. Already we're seeing two different version of the same letter, so either he's changing his position or seeing the winds aren't exactly blowing as he thought and attempting to appease his voters.

Deiselscout is correct. It is a numbers game. Politicians need to get alot of response, and they especially track where their correspondence is coming from. With Wyden, who holds a state-wide Federal office, the more he hears from small-town and rural voices the better. He is aware that there is a big urban-rural divide, and tries to bridge it in his urban type of way. People i know have been successful in pushing him in a direction that was against his own stated position, because we were organized in the small communities. Of course, we were pushing him from the left, on non-gun issues, but Wyden is a centrist, which means he tends to go towards the area he gets the most pressure.
The message, however, is important. It needs to be short, and his staff (who read this) need to be able to judge that is coming from a potential vote, not from someone who hates his guts. This holds for all political correspondence.
All this really holds true when you write to your state representatives and senator. Do you know who represents you in Salem? <broken link removed>
If you live in a district that has an even divide between R's and D's, you have leverage. Has the office changed hands in recent elections? You should know this stuff.
The message is also important. I continue to believe that talking about 'gun rights' is a losing argument, because you are playing into the gun banning argument from the get-go. Do you think guns are responsible for violence? f not, then explain to your reps and everyone else why gun bans will do nothing to make people safer and are a waste of political effort.
Personally, because I don't have a conservative mind-set disability, I have no problem advocating spending money on health care, education, and job creation as better ways to curb violence.
Regardless, while your responses from politicians will be form letters, if we hit on a powerful message and argument, we will see the politicians we are influencing start to adopt our language. That's when we know we are having an impact.

 

[CounterOfBeans]

They are going to do what they want. They will, if nothing else, use the Sandy Hook tragedy as a way to invade our personal lives more than they already do. They will take little steps now that we can live with or at least deal with and then move forward with the larger goal of seizing our firearms later. This is not a new plan. I am profoundly sad that our government thinks they have the right to take our constitutionally protected rights and 'interpret' them to meet their own agendas.

Government usurpation of authority is a boringly predictable tendency of human history that the Constitutions were designed to put a stop to. I am more profoundly sad that there are people who appear to be such willing victims of their own fatalistic cynicism at the expense of watching the Constitutional Republic they simply inherited disappear before their eyes.

 

[wence5]

Throughout history, what happened to the folks with mental/physical illness in countries that had been disarmed?

Might remind these dudes about what happened in Germany. The Nazi's disarmed the people and then murdered everyone that fits in the above category.


We have fascists running the show now.

And I have talked to friends on the left that say we, the well armed citizens, are just paranoid and delusional. They say that can't happen here. The sheep on the left are well trained.

 

[CounterOfBeans]

When I read the SECOND AMMENDMENT I fail to see any "Licensing Requirement" for gun ownership. Gun ownership is not a privilege, and doesn't require licensing guidlines like say, Driving a Motor Vehicle, or Flying an Airplane.

Hey Fitzwilly, I know you probably didn't intend this, but what you actually just did was write off another fundamental right as if it's an expendable sacrificial lamb....you know, the right to travel. I know we all don't get to read much about the law in school like the law requires, but here's what the actual law says about that.

ORS "801.305 'Highway.' (1) 'Highway' means every public way, road, street, thoroughfare and place, including bridges, viaducts and other structures within the boundaries of this state, open, used or intended for use of the general public for vehicles or vehicular traffic as a matter of right."

Bet you won't find that law cited in a DMV manual. Because we already know what to do when someone at the DMV wants to debate what that law plainly says and means:

ORS "174.030 Construction favoring natural right to prevail. Where a statute is equally susceptible of two interpretations, one in favor of natural right and the other against it, the former is to prevail"

"Policy" is a handy word to use to make people believe that official acts or statements are supported by the "law". It's true that "policy" is what executive branch agencies adopt to carry out the legislative intent of the "law", but the presumption that a "policy" is lawful only survives until the "law" shows that it's not... like 801.305 above.

Example:

We have a 1st Amendment right to freedom of religion. We also have a 1st Amendment right to freedom of association. Church embodies the exercise of both these rights simultaneously. But if our ability to get to the church of our choice is only possible by using our vehicles on the highways to get there, then the right to travel is an utterly essential pre-condition to our ability to exercise our two church-related 1st Amendment rights. Therefore, "policies" that pretend to diminish our "right" to travel into an administratively-regulated, pay-as-you-go "privilege", actually have the effect of interfering or threatening to interfere with or take away altogether, two other rights that are also natural, fundamental and unalienable.

And for all you LEO types out there, just so you know:

ORS "181.400 Interference with personal and property rights of others. No member of the state police shall in any way interfere with the rights or property of any person, except for the prevention of crime, or the capture or arrest of persons committing crimes."

AND

ORS "181.030 Powers and duties of department and its members.
(3) Each member of the state police has the same general powers and authority as those conferred by law upon sheriffs, police officers, constables and peace officers. A member of the state police may be appointed as a deputy medical examiner."

If the laws above are plainly worded like Oregon Constitution, Article 4, Section 20 requires them to be, then a reader can only draw the conclusion that tickets that are issued for non-compliance with DMV administrative issues like "licenses" and "registration" are not "crimes". They are a lower class of offenses called "violations". Ask the LEOs on this site if you're not sure. Therefore, for these kinds of offenses, LEOs appear to have no authority in law to stop or detain Citizens who are traveling in their cars because.... notwithstanding LEOs training to keep an eye out for expired tags, Citizens are simply exercising their right to travel and are legally presumed to be obeying the laws that do pertain to them as Citizens.

Since we all know now that a "license" is defined in Oregon law as "permission to pursue a commercial activity", possession of a "license" or the existence of "registration" ("license" = "registration" 183.310(5)) plates can only present the legal possibility that Citizens CAN use their cars for "commercial" purposes, because they have "permission" from the State to do so. But it doesn't mean they ARE carrying people or property for hire as a regular business.

There is plenty of case law to back up the words above as well.

 

[DeanfromOregon]

Well we know what the Exec Order is going to be now. Private sales are finito and the background check.......doesn't matter to me because Oregon uses its own, far superior system to do this and (and charge you $10 per transaction so it must be better!)

 

[CounterOfBeans]

Well we know what the Exec Order is going to be now. Private sales are finito and the background check.......doesn't matter to me because Oregon uses its own, far superior system to do this and (and charge you $10 per transaction so it must be better!)

So, out of curiosity, is there anything constructive about what you just said? I'm struggling to find it. It's true that you have a right to say what you want, but it's kinda like someone being on the front deck rail of the Titanic who just sits there looking at the ice berg muttering to himself how all is lost rather than throwing his shoe at the captains window to warn him of impending disaster or how to avoid it. Parroting your resignation to the demise of the best thing human innovation ever brought to the cause of civilzation (The US Constitution), does nothing to fix the problems we face but it sure aids in taking the wind out of the sails of people who want to do something about it doesn't it? Is that what your looking for? Are you looking to cultivate a circle of people who will join you in your throws of surrender? Just curious.