

01.25.17

As we told you on January 10, Kate Brown has requested new legislation to further impede your right to lawfully acquire a firearm.

HB 2237 would eliminate the safeguard that allows a firearm’s transfer to take place after 3 business days have elapsed if the Oregon State Police do not complete a background check.

As with every other provision of law that allows people to exercise their Constitutionally protected rights, Brown and her Bloomberg funded flunkies are calling this safeguard “a loophole.”

That’s right, when the state imposes a regulation that says your rights can be suspended by the state for no reason, any law that provides protections against indefinite suspension of those rights must be “a loophole.”

Note, the OSP does not provide numbers on the far more common “delays” although in the past they have said they would. Under Oregon law, there is no limit on how long the OSP can “delay” a transfer. It can literally be years. That is why the rarely used safeguard allowing a transfer after 3 business days is so important. If the State Police don’t do their job, a perfectly qualified buyer can be delayed forever, and that is exactly what Brown is pushing for with her bill.

But let’s look at the reality behind the rhetoric. All of the countless restrictions on our rights have been sold as a way to make us safer by keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people. But what happens when “dangerous” people attempt to buy guns and are stopped by this brilliant system?

We have just received the stats for 2016. As always, they highlight what a joke the system is. This information is directly from the State Police. These are their numbers and their charts and graphs.

In 2016 out of 302,725 attempted firearm’s purchases, the OSP denied 2591 of them. That averages out to 216 denials a month. Of those, 78% were denials to “prohibited persons.” To OSP that means “Individuals convicted of a felony, are on probation, have a restraining order, have been convicted of controlled substance crimes, certain misdemeanor convictions, and additional federal and state mandates.” In other words, bad hombres.

So what happens when the crack staff at the Firearms Instant Check Unit identifies one of these desperados? Well… not much.

In all of 2016, of the 2030 felons and other “prohibited persons” who attempted to buy guns, a grand total of 14 were arrested. Yes, that’s less than 1%.

Of the 226 people OSP said were actually wanted when they attempted a purchase only 12 were arrested.

Given that the number of unjustified delays is about 95%, it’s safe to say that the number of unjustified denials is also almost certainly quite high, but it’s still obvious that there is no serious effort to actually do anything about prohibited buyers. So what purpose does this charade serve? It serves to harass and inconvenience legitimate gun buyers.

HB 2237 has been assigned to the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Representative Jeff Barker. Please consider taking a minute to contact him and share these statistics and tell him to oppose this pointless and politically motivated attack on your rights. Tell him HB 2237 will do nothing but harass the good guys.

Barker can be reached by email here Rep.JeffBarker@oregonlegislature.gov

He can be reached by phone at 503-986-1428.