| 02.12.14
Senate Bill 1551 was not amended or voted on today, although there are several amendments being offered. The bill is now scheduled for a “work session” again tomorrow morning at 8:30.
One amendment adds “aunt or uncle” and “first cousin” to the list of people you can give a firearm to without subjecting them to an invasive check of their personal history.
Mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law must still undergo this pointless, and often failed, exercise in futility.
Two other amendments require that the County Sheriff and, “if applicable,” the local chief of police, be notified if a person is denied a transfer.
One amendment applies this requirement to anyone who is denied a transfer (that is the “dash-2” amendment); the other applies it to certain law-breakers, but not others. (That is the “dash-4” amendment.)
For example, under the “dash-4” amendment, if a person had a felony conviction and tried to buy a gun, the local police would be notified. But if a person had “any outstanding felony warrants for arrest” or “Is free on any form of pretrial release for a felony,” the cops would not be called. Furthermore, the cops would not be called if the denied person “Has been convicted of a misdemeanor involving violence or found guilty except for insanity under ORS 161.295 of a misdemeanor involving violence within the previous four years.” Even though this disqualifies them from a firearms purchase.
Note: the amendment only says the police must be notified. It does not require them to take any action.
As Dave Barry would say, you can’t make this stuff up.
Under the “dash-2” amendment, if a person was denied a transfer because the State Police screwed up and and said “no” to a transfer because the buyer did not have an Oregon driver’s license (NOT REQUIRED FOR A LAWFUL TRANSFER AND YES, THIS HAPPENS), that person may or may not find themselves being visited by the police, even though this would be entirely a mistake on the part of the ID unit.
It’s important to note that under this bill, you would be required to maintain a “gun registration” list of any gun you transferred for five years even though the state police insist they are “destroying” the records of those transfers in ten days!
If you lose the very records the OSP says they destroy, you can go to prison!
We can think of no other instance where a private party is compelled to keep records (that are not allowed to be kept elsewhere) under the threat of a prison sentence. (And of course you have to pay to do this and you must use a credit card.)
There is also a “dash-9″ amendment that just showed up. It says “Where appropriate, a person may enforce the legal duties imposed by ORS 166.412 (7)(a) or (b), by the provisions of ORS 30.260 to 30.300 and ORS chapter 183.”.
At this time we have no idea what they are talking about.
Two other bills received action today.
HB 4035 allows some corrections officers to keep guns in their cars when they go to work. The original bill made no sense. We were able to draft amendments that made the bill workable (although we think the number of corrections officers who will benefit is far too small) and the amendments were adopted. We believe this bill will pass out of the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow.
HB 4068 was intended to allow persons who had been convicted of minor marijuana violations in other states to have the same access to CHLs that people who had similar convictions in Oregon have. The bill was well-intentioned but fell way short of what it should have been. For example, it ignored those who had very minor convictions before 1973 in Oregon but who still are locked out of getting CHLs.
With some frantic last minute amending OFF was able to work with several legislators and Legislative Counsel to fix the bill and our amendments were adopted. (We are truly grateful to have some expert legal help that raced to craft these amendments.)
We expect that bill to pass out of House Judiciary tomorrow as well. |
