After Move To Ban Firearms, Gun Owner Avalanche Buries Oregon Secretary of State's Office
The increasingly desperate anti-gun/anti-Second Amendment crowd has grown bolder in openly declaring their intentions to ban the vast majority of firearms in the hands of private citizens and criminalize those who fail to comply with their gun-grabbing dictates.
The Oregon Firearms Federation warned in April about an anti-gun ballot initiative petition that gun-grabber advocacy groups circulating in the hopes of obtaining enough signatures to place their proposal in front of voters.
For ballot initiatives to be approved for consideration by the Secretary of State Office, proposals must be placed online for a period of time to receive comments and complaints, and the pro-gun group urged gun owners in Oregon to make their voices heard … and boy, did they ever.
If passed, Initiative 43 would ban all semi-automatic rifles defined as so-called “assault weapons,” as well any semi-automatic handgun or shotgun capable of holding more than 10 rounds and any “high capacity” magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds.
In other words, it would have banned the vast majority of modern firearms in circulation today.
The initiative would further mandate that any gun owners in possession of such firearms and magazines be forced to register it with the state, render it inoperable, sell it to a licensed dealer or surrender it to authorities. Those who fail to do so within 120 days of passage would instantly be guilty of a Class B felony.
As noted, gun owners were urged to make their opposition to the initiative known during the comment period, and the Oregon Firearms Federation reported on Wednesday it had indeed done so, quite literally swamping the Secretary of State’s Office with an absolute avalanche of comments and complaints about the gun ban and confiscation measure.
In fact, while the office reportedly receives an average of a dozen or so comments on the typical ballot initiative, this particular measure drew more than 1,000 comments and complaints totaling more than 1,573 pages, all of which can be read right here.
Many of the comments pointed out the blatant unconstitutionality of the measure, while others remarked on the sheer impossibility of enforcement, as countless gun owners who declined to comply would be criminalized and turned into felons overnight.
It was noted by many that whoever drew up the measure had little knowledge of how firearms actually operate, while a number of others pointed out the arbitrary nature of the 10-round limit and prohibited features that would render a particular firearm banned.
Interestingly, every single gun owner who took the time to comment on that initiative will now have legal standing to file lawsuits against it in the Oregon court system, should it actually make it on the ballot and somehow passed into law.
Now that the comment period is over, the anti-gun group behind this ballot initiative can resume attempting to obtain more than 88,184 valid petition signatures within a set time frame, at which point they will get their measure on the ballot.
As of April 16, prior to the comment period, petition organizers had only obtained 1,539 signatures.
This proposed ballot initiative in Oregon makes in abundantly clear that the anti-Second Amendment crowd is no longer content to settle for small legislative attempts at gun control. Instead, they are going for the gusto with a near-total gun ban.
As such, gun owners and Second Amendment supporters must be equally resolute in the defense of their natural and inalienable right to keep and bear arms. They must stop cold this despicable attempt by gun grabbers to infringe upon that constitutionally-protected right.
Furthermore, the pro-gun crowd needs to mobilize and organize that defense not just in Oregon, but nationwide. This ballot initiative is not an isolated effort, but merely one of many that have been quietly launched on the state level across the country.
Even better would be a coordinated and organized effort to counter these gun grabbers with pro-gun ballot initiatives and legislation in multiple states that would further strengthen protections for the right to keep and bear arms. That would force the anti-gun crowd into a defensive position of its own — one these groups are not accustomed to taking — and seriously dilute their infringement efforts.
The gun grabbers will never stop in their relentless assault on the civil rights of gun owners, so gun owners must be even more relentless in their defense of that right.
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