HB 2727 A, a vastly watered down “CHL Privacy” bill, is due to be heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday May 21st at 8AM.
As you know, this bill passed out of the House recently and now must pass both a Senate Committee and the full Senate before becoming law.
Frankly, the bill as amended provides virtually no protections for CHL holders. After being diluted by members of the House Judiciary Committee, the original strong protections envisioned by its chief sponsor, Representative Kim Thatcher, were stripped from the bill and now it is little more that window dressing.
If you saw our alert dated May 9th, you know that some anti-gun crusaders are already gloating about their continued access to the personal information about CHL holders.
But there is still time to fix the bill. It is essential that you contact the Chair of the Committee, Floyd Prozanski , along with the committee members and urge them to return the original protections to the bill.
Contact information and a sample message follow:
Senator Floyd Prozanski
sen.floydprozanski@state.or.us
900 Court St. NE, S-417, Salem, OR, 97301
503-986 -1704
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Dear Senator Prozanski,
HB 2727 A is due to be heard in your committee shortly.
As an original sponsor of the bill, you know the importance of the safeguards the original bill included.
As you are no doubt aware, The “Newberg Graphic” has already stated that they can still use the amended law to harass certain CHL holders. In a May 7th editorial, they stated “This newspaper and many others, have accessed information on CHL holders in order to report for instance, that teachers with CHL permits are carrying handguns in schools.”
It’s just this kind of reckless misuse of the CHL information that 2727 attempted to curb, but the amended bill will not.
Now that you are planning a hearing for the amended bill, I urge you in the strongest terms to add amendments to make the bill actually do something for license holders. WIthout real safeguards, the bill will solve nothing.
Yours,
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