Assault weapon ban petitioners turn in signatures to Oregon Secretary of State

The three chief petitioners for an initiative that would restrict the sale, production and ownership of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines filed several thousand signatures Monday to move their proposal forward.

They were joined by a few dozen high school students and other advocates for stricter gun control, energized in response to the recent shooting in Parkland, Florida, and this weekend's international March for Our Lives.

"There are high schools just like (ours) and kids just like us getting killed in their place of education, which is absolutely insane to me," said Abigail Brown, 15, of Lake Oswego. "I just want to feel safe in my school and I want the rest of the children in this country to also feel safe."

Supporters arrived on a yellow school bus with a box containing 3,443 signatures, meeting up with others who arrived at the Capitol earlier. The group sang "Give Peace a Chance" while walking the few hundred feet from the front steps to the Secretary of State's Election Division office.

If the Secretary of State verifies that there are at least 1,000 valid signatures, the Attorney General will begin the ballot title drafting process on April 10.

Initiative Petition 43 (see below) was filed March 22 by an interfaith group of religious leaders from Portland. It replaced petition 42, which was filed three days earlier but subsequently withdrawn.

There are no major differences between the proposals, which would ban the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines if the measure was passed by voters. It would require current gun owners to do one of the following with applicable firearms or high-capacity magazines: register them with the state, sell them to a registered dealer, remove them from the state, render them inoperable or surrender them to law enforcement.

Breaking this law would constitute a Class B felony.

“We know that support for an assault weapon ban has been growing since Sandy Hook,” said Penny Okamoto, executive director of Ceasefire Oregon. “The Legislature has had five years to act on this.”

As defined in the initiative, an “assault weapon” includes: semi-automatic rifles and pistols with a detachable magazine and one of several modifications, semi-automatic shotguns with grip and stock modifications and semi-automatic rifles under 30 inches in length.

High-capacity magazine is defined as any feeding device that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The proposal’s announcement sparked outrage from conservative Oregonians. They called this proposal an infringement on the Second Amendment and a realization of a long-held belief that the government would someday try to take away its citizens' firearms.

Oregon Firearms Federation Director Kevin Starrett said that this movement is the result of well-funded, far-left organizations that are exploiting impressionable children to attack the Constitution.

"It's frightening that so many young people are blindly following puppet masters and actually demanding fewer rights," Starrett said in an email.

He added that the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School wasn't the result of someone having access to a gun. Rather, it happened because of systemic failures and actions among those in power to ignore obvious warning signs.

"We think it's pathetic that a well-oiled propaganda machine can bury all these facts," Starrett said.

Pastor Mark Knutson of the Augustana Lutheran Church in Portland, one of the chief petitioners, said that they have been working on this proposal since July 2016. His group was aiming for the 2020 general election ballot, but he said the surging of young voices demanded they move more quickly.

Students will be involved in the petition at every level of planning and gathering signatures, Knutson said. He told them Monday that they are going to get hands-on experience running an initiative, including receiving the same training from the Secretary of State's office that the petitioners received.

"These young leaders can't wait," he said.

But the accelerated timeline is causing some to doubt if they will be able to collect the necessary 88,184 valid signatures in time to qualify for November's general election ballot.

The deadline to submit signatures is July 6. The initiative will almost certainly be appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court, and resolution of these cases usually takes between two and six months.

Petitioners cannot gather signatures during a legal appeal, and they could have very little time left to do so once the review concludes.

Moreover, the appeal may not be complete by the July 6 deadline because the petition may not even become eligible for the appeal process to begin until mid- to late May.

"I'm concerned about the timeline," Okamoto said. "We might not make it."

If they don't get the initiative on the ballot this year, Okamoto said, they will push for passage of the underlying proposal as a bill during the 2019 legislative session. If they didn't succeed there, they try with another initiative in 2020.

"It's a big challenge," Knutson said. "But as people of faith, we have stories of the impossible that became real."

Previous coverage: Oregon initiative seeks to ban assault weapons

From the weekend: Thousands raise voices for gun reform during March for Our Lives at Oregon Capitol

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