ANTI-GUN BILL SCHEDULED FOR VOTE TOMORROW
On Monday, June 27th,the Oregon House is scheduled to vote on HB 2792. (That does not mean it will actually be voted on. Anything can happen.)
In its original form, as introduced by House Rep and pro-liberty heroine, Kim Thatcher, the bill would have recognized the concealed handgun licenses of other states. Now all its original language has been stripped out and it bears no resemblance to the bill as introduced.
After the bill was “gut and stuffed” by Senator Floyd Prozanski, the Senate passed it but the House refused to agree to the new and now unrecognizable bill. So a “conference committee” was appointed to iron out the differences.
The conference committee agreed to all the changes the House refused to agree to with one minor and meaningless change.
This mangled bill is scheduled to be voted on tomorrow on the House floor.
In its current form the bill does provide the language we asked for to define how a handgun could be lawfully carried on a snowmobile, ATV or motorcycle, but in exchange for adding that language (which was stripped from a bill which would have addressed that issue alone) Prozanski added the poison bill he promised at the beginning of the session. He added language which hopelessly muddles and complicates the current law dealing with how a person can get seek rights restoration if they had a very old felony conviction.
Since the beginning of 2010, people with felony convictions could appeal to a court and request rights restoration. If they could convince the court that they were now upstanding citizens and no threat, they could have their rights to own a gun restored if the court agreed.
Frankly, the new law has worked well. Dangerous people have neither sought nor received rights restoration and people who made a dumb mistake 30 years ago, and have since been productive members of society, had the opportunity to make a case for themselves.
Now, that is in jeopardy of disappearing. The gut and stuffed version of HB 2792 will make the rights restoration process as much of a mess has HB 2853 did in 2009.
As much as we want our motorcycle language to become law, and as much as sportsmen and motorcycle riders deserve to have clear laws, we think adding this poison bill is a mistake. We regret that the Republicans on the conference committee agreed to it. Please consider contacting your House Rep and telling them that HB 2792 is a dangerous and counterproductive capitulation. Thanks for your activism.