Category: Blog Post

04.13.15

“But I can tell you that if I go two days without taking my medication, I can’t walk in the door of this building. I can’t get up in the morning. I can’t take a shower.”

These are the words of Senator Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, who says she suffers from “major depression.” Hayward also claims that both she and her husband “own weapons.”  Certainly this has the potential to be a volatile combination and it is our hope that Hayward is getting adequate treatment and that the “weapons” she keeps in her home are not accessible to her. (Based on her comments she almost certainly would be denied a concealed handgun license anywhere in the state.) But apparently Hayward believes that her disability should be projected onto gun owners in Oregon.

Hayward is the chief sponsor of SB 945, a bill that would send you to prison if a minor were to access a firearm you owned. The bill is scheduled for a public hearing and work session on Thursday, April 16th at 8am in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Given Hayward’s admission of her own inability to “function as a normal human being” without her medication, it seems odd and hypocritical that she would limit the punishments created in the bill, to guns acquired by minors. Why not punish people who allow access to firearms by people who suffer from depression and “can’t take a shower” without medicine?

It is also disturbing that while attempting to stigmatize gun owners, Hayward ignores all the other things that a child, or mentally unsound adult, could acquire in a home and hurt themselves or others with.

Ironically, Hayward is a physician.  One would think she would be more concerned about deaths by overdoses of drugs, especially the kind of drugs the she herself is authorized to prescribe.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdoses were the leading cause of injury death in 2013. Among people 25 to 64 years old, drug overdoses caused more deaths than motor vehicle crashes.

Of the 43,982 overdose deaths in 2013, over half of them were related to prescription drugs, a vastly larger number of deaths than caused by minors’ access to firearms.  According to a Washington Post story, (no friend to gun owners) in 2011 there were a total of 591 accidental gun deaths.  A tragically high number to be sure, but dwarfed by the number of deaths caused by doctor prescribed drugs.

Add to this the staggering number of people who die every year as a result of mistakes made by doctors and it becomes clear that Hayward has little interest in reducing deaths, only in attacking gun owners.

A simple change to the bill would require that, in addition to firearms, people should be prosecuted if they do not lock up drugs. Of course, this same logic could be extended to people who don’t safeguard knives, hammers and the keys to their car.  How many juveniles die every year after gaining access to their parent’s vehicles?

Hayward is also a sponsor of SB 941, the “universal background check” bill due to be voted on on Tuesday in the Senate. This is another ironic twist. You see, under that bill, it would be illegal for you to safeguard a firearm for a friend who is experiencing an episode of the very kind of depression Hayward claims makes it impossible for her to “go to work” without medication.

If a friend came to you one night and asked if you would please put his gun in your safe until his mental state improved, you would be forbidden from doing so unless you conducted a background check on yourself. Of course, it better be before 10PM or that would be impossible, and if you were a victim of one of the Oregon State Police’s many delays or denials, you would have to tell your friend that the law prohibited you from helping them.

Hayward’s struggle with depression and her reliance on drugs to function “normally” is serious and tragic, but her focus on attacking the rights of gun owners is misguided, counterproductive and clearly the result of a political agenda far more than a desire to reduce deaths.

Please consider contacting Senator Hayward and suggesting she concentrate on solving the problems of prescription drug overdoses and doctor errors, which cause far more deaths than accidents with firearms.

Contact info and sample message follow:

Click here for pre-written message: sen.elizabethsteinerhayward@state.or.us

Or use the cut and paste message below.

Email : Sen.ElizabethSteinerHayward@state.or.us

Phone: 503-986-1717

________________________________________________________

Dear Senator Hayward,

It is troubling that, while seeking to punish gun owners when minors access their firearms, you have made no effort to force people to safeguard prescription drugs, tools, knives or their cars, all of which are responsible for far more deaths than firearms acquired by minors.

If you are really interested in saving lives, why not address the countless deaths caused every year by doctors’ mistakes?

Why are you also promoting SB 941, which would make it illegal to safeguard a firearm for a friend who was suffering from a bout of depression?

Your policies are driven by agendas rather than any desire to reduce deaths. I urge you to reconsider these dangerous positions.

Yours,

What if every club and range in Oregon, that provided its facilities to local police for shooting practice, contacted those departments and explained the dangers of the upcoming anti-gun legislation?

What if all those agencies were told that mandatory “background checks” have created nightmare enforcement issues in Washington?

What if they were informed that the current background check system has essentially zero effect on criminals but regularly denies transfers to qualified buyers?

What if they were reminded that the victims of domestic violence could well be the people most damaged by a law that made it illegal to provide a gun to a person in danger?

What if they were told that, should Prozanksi and Kitzhaber have their way, you would not be allowed to give, or even lend, a firearm to a trusted, old friend?

The coming tidal wave of gun restrictions, if successful, will be horribly destructive of liberty in Oregon. Many things we take for granted as part of our heritage will evaporate.  Medical personnel will be recruited to spy on patients and report whether they own firearms. Soon, permits, and government permission, will be required to simply own a firearm, and, if many in the gun control world achieve what they have said they want, most guns will be illegal period.

As we have seen in Washington State, the people who crafted the most recent gun grab ballot measure see it as only a first step in their war on gun rights. Their counterparts in Oregon have made no secret that they have the same plans here.

What then will our police and sheriffs do? Will they be part of the confiscations? Will they arrest you for handing a gun to a friend at a range? (Something now illegal in Washington?)  Will they take you to jail because you lent a gun to a single woman living alone and facing a violent stalker?  Will they take her to jail?  Will they put you in handcuffs and confiscate your property because someone falsely accused you of being mentally ill?

These are all realities already in other states.

Anti-gun legislators have already stated they intend to do the same here.

Will the very police who use our ranges start searching our homes? That is the question gun clubs and ranges have to start asking themselves.

It is our hope that our friends in law enforcement are going to honor their oaths of office.

For generations, the gun clubs and ranges in Oregon have provided facilities and support to the local police and sheriffs.  Will those clubs now start demanding that our police agencies step up and help us fight these assaults on our rights?  Or will they spend their time planning the next picnic?

The will to fight back is strong in Oregon. At least 4 counties have passed pro-gun ordinances. (Lake, Baker, Union and Wallowa)

Now is the time to let our friends behind the badge know we expect them to stand by us, as we have stood by them.

 

11.19.14

The passage of I 594 in Washington was the result of many things, but not least was the assistance of a complicit media that consistently lied and misled the public about the measure.

While there was widespread opposition to I 594 by law enforcement, the establishment press virtually ignored that fact. The reality that the measure was bankrolled by a few anti-rights billionaires also received less than stellar attention.

Although the media insisted it was all about stopping crime and keeping guns away from the mentally ill they intentionally ignored the ramifications that gun rights advocates warned of.

We saw the same kind of agenda driven “reporting” across Oregon when Ballot Measure 5 was being debated in 2000. This is the measure that ended private transfers of firearms at “gun shows” and vastly expanded the state’s gun registration system. Virtually every major “news” outlet blatantly lied about the measure and, in doing so, helped pass one of the most damaging ballot measures in Oregon history.

2015 promises to be no different. The media hucksterism has already begun even before a bill has been introduced in the legislature or a ballot measure has been filed.

On November 17th, the Oregon Firearms Federation received a call from a “reporter” named Hillary Borrud . An audio of the call is at the bottom of this story. She claimed to interested in the chances of a universal background check/registration bill passing in the 2015 session. She specifically wanted to know if we saw “any problems” with that kind of legislation.

We called Borrud back and pointed out to her that yes,there were clearly problems with extending background checks to guns being transferred between family members and friends.

That the idea that you could not lend a firearm to a person in danger made little sense.

That the notion that you could not safeguard a firearm for a neighbor when they left town or leave a gun with your girlfriend or boyfriend was absurd.

That the fact that firearms instructors would be forbidden from allowing students to shoot any gun they had not brought to class themselves was dangerous and counter-productive.

But mostly we pointed out the reality that Oregon has proven over and over that background checks stop virtually no criminals or mentally ill persons, while preventing countless qualified people from completing legal transfers. In the old days, that would have been called “a story.” But not to Hillary.

Hillary already had an angle. She had an agenda. Facts were not going to get in the way of a quick completion of her already forged conclusion. The epic failure that the background check system is should be something any responsible reporter would be eager to learn more about and report on. But you see, that takes “work.” And in this case, it didn’t even take a lot of work. In fact, all it took was for her to look at the reporting OFF has already done on this issue using the Oregon State Police’s own numbers and charts.

You can see those here and here.

All this info was provided to Borrud. She saw it on our website. All she had to do was read it. She said these were “allegations”. When it was pointed out the charts in the Nov 16 alert were the OSP’s own charts, she was not interested.  She would not contact the OSP to determine if what we were saying was true. She was too busy.

And this is how “reporting” is done these days.  An amazingly lazy employee creates a narrative in her own mind that suits her own bias.  She scribbles a few lines and misquotes a few people.  Important information that is spoon fed to her is ignored. And the people reading her tripe are misinformed.

Expect a lot more of this as the battle over government gun registration and confiscation heats up in 2015.

Here is the pointless story published in the Eastern Oregonian . An identical version appeared in the Blue Mountain Eagle.  If it weren’t for the “comments” section the readers of these papers would have no idea what a waste of a salary employees like Borrud are.

Hillary’s message:

It’s always troubling when bureaucracies either cannot understand the law, or simply choose to break it.

A case in point is the Eugene “4J” School District, headed by Dr. Sheldon Berman. (541-790-7707  berman_s@4j.lane.edu )

 

No matter how you feel about it, Oregon law clearly allows persons with Oregon concealed handgun licenses to be on public school property.

Now, there is no question that the government school monopoly is not happy about this, and in spite of zero examples of any CHL holder ever hurting or threatening anyone, they return year after year to the legislature to demand that CHL holders be banned from their property.

This is ironic, of course, given the number of times armed civilians have stopped school shootings. But for the public school establishment, politics trumps kid’s safety.

The Eugene 4J school district has a policy that forbids anyone, even persons with concealed handgun licenses from being on their property with a firearm.  You can see it here.

They even post it on big signs on their school doors.

Look folks, this isn’t news. Those policies are void. Period. This was settled when we sued the Oregon University System in 2011. The courts found that schools simply do not have the authority to make rules of this kind. In the Oregon Appeals Court ruling they said of the Oregon University System’s similar policy:

“Therefore, we conclude that OAR 580-022-0045 is an exercise of an “authority to regulate” firearms that is not expressly authorized by the Legislative Assembly, and that it is preempted by ORS 166.170(1).Accordingly, the rule exceeds the agency’s authority, ORS 183.400(4)(b), and is invalid.  OAR 580-022-0045(3) held invalid.”

Really Dr. Berman, it was in all the papers.

Gun owners face an endless array of rules, regulations, orders, laws and statutes and we are expected to understand and obey every one of them. So why do bureaucrats like Berman believe they are above the law? Notice, the policy was readopted  in May of this year! Are we to believe that no one in the Eugene school district was aware of the court’s ruling?  If so, we’d hate to see the social studies classes there.

But it does not end there of course. The Oregon Department of Education “Early Learning Division” has an administrative rule dealing with day care centers. OAR 414-300-0170 says, among other things, “The possession and/or storage of firearms and ammunition are prohibited in the center.”

We wondered how this could be legal so we started contacting them last year about this. Here is a response our lawyer got after months of run arounds, from Kathleen Hynes “Legal and Compliance Manager Office of Child Care The Early Learning Division”

“Thank you for your inquiry. Counsel for the agency has researched the question Mr. Starrett posed regarding regulation of firearms in child care facilities.   The agency has also considered the issue under its policies and procedures, and has concluded that the administrative rules in question don’t violate the statute that Mr. Starrett referenced, or any other laws or case law concerning firearm regulation.”

Oh really? Not so fast Kathleen.  This month, Legislative Counsel weighed in on this.  Those are the folks who actually write the laws for the legislature.  Here’s what they said:

“The short answer is that we believe that ORS 166.170 preempts OAR 414-300- 0170(1)(k) and that, if it were challenged, the rule would very likely be declared invalid.”

and:

“It is, on its face, an administrative rule that regulates the possession and storage of firearms and ammunition and it therefore falls within the scope of preemption under ORS 166.170. Because there is not a state statute expressly authorizing the Department of Education, the Early Learning Division or any child care facility to regulate the possession or storage of firearms or ammunition within a child care facility, we believe a court would declare this rule invalid under ORS 166.170”.

So let’s be clear. If you are in possession of an Oregon CHL and you are not doing something illegal, you are allowed on public school property with a firearm. We will actively litigate against any school district that attempts to implement this policy in violation of Oregon law and we will contribute to the legal defense of any person ensnared by policies of this kind. If you run a day center you cannot be prohibited from have the tools you need to defend those children when the monsters come calling.

And don’t think this is isolated. See here and here.

The 2014 election is upon us. Ballots are in the mail.

Your vote is essential. Rest assured the anti-gunners are well funded and working overtime to get out the vote and promote freedom haters. The loss of one Oregon Senate seat could spell the difference between keeping or losing your gun rights. Make no mistake, in many, many districts the race will be decided by a tiny number of votes.

Our candidate ratings for Oregon House, Senate and Governor are posted  here. There you will find an explanation of how we rate candidates whenever a rating is possible. To see our take on Federal races, you can go directly here.  The direct link for local races is here.

The Governor’s race has come down to a contest between two candidates who could not be more different. Dennis Richardson believes that the best way to respond to calls for more gun control is to encourage more firearms education. By that he means actually teaching young people how to safely use firearms and to respect them.

Governor Kitzhaber would prefer to see more restrictions on gun owners.  Remember, he personally accompanied anti-gun zealot Mark Kelly to a hearing in Salem to stump for an expansion of Oregon’s horribly failed background check/registration system.

While Kitzhaber supports more restrictions on law abiding Oregonians he also actively supports expanding rights for law breakers. Ballot Measure 88 would give driver’s licenses to people who are here in violation of the law.

Kitzhaber and other supporters make the absurd claim that giving driver’s licenses to illegal aliens will somehow guarantee that these same lawbreakers will run out and get auto insurance. In his debate with Richardson on Oct 13th he defended his position describing illegals as “taxpayers,” an idea quickly dispelled by Richardson who pointed out they were not “taxpayers” unless they were using someone else’s Social Security number.

Gun owners should be very concerned about Measure 88.  If illegals are given driver’s licenses the next step will be voting privileges, which are already absurdly easy to get in Oregon. The supporters of 88 claimed that the driver’s “cards” could never be used for anything but driving. That’s already been proven false. Rest assured, the vast majority of illegals will not be voting for candidates who support gun rights.

The revelations of the criminal past of the Governor’s girlfriend are also troubling, not because of her fraudulent marriage or her illegal growing operation  but because of the obvious ethical problems created by her misuse of her relationship with the Governor for her personal gain.

After three terms of Kitzhaber Oregon ranks near the bottom of everything. Our unemployment rates, graduation rates and economic health are getting close to third world status.  Kitzhaber’s only response to this seems to be that he supports same sex marriage and abortion. And while that might be enough for some people, even the most committed leftists should demand a chief executive who is marginally competent and is not flushing millions of our dollars down the toilet with pathetic schemes like “Cover Oregon.”

Add to this Kitzhaber’s outrageous misuse of the Oregon State Police to push his anti-gun agenda and the decision on who to vote for becomes fairly easy.

Voters could be forgiven if they are scratching their heads over Ballot Measure 90. This measure would limit elections to only two candidates, the “top two” from whatever field started in what we now call a “primary.”

The voters pamphlet is filled with arguments for and against this measure. The proponents are claiming that this measure would open up the process to more voters and better candidates. Both rural Democrats and urban Republicans have published statements implying that this system would give them a voice they don’t have now.since they would be able to vote irrespective of the party they are in.

It is true that in Oregon an awful lot of voters are locked out of the process because they are independents and don’t have a vote in the primary elections, but it’s hard to imagine how this would be an improvement. In Portland, which is totally controlled by anti-gun Democrats, two anti-gun Democrats will be the “top two” in the final election. That gives a pro-gun independent or Republican (or third party member) the choice of voting for an anti-gun Democrat, or…an anti-gun Democrat. And while one could make the case that only an anti-gun Democrat can win in Portland anyway, you should not be forced to choose between casting your ballot for someone you disagree with or nobody.

Whether your candidate wins or loses, you should still have a right to make a statement with your vote and your conscience. A similar argument could be made if you are an anti-gun Democrat in eastern Oregon.

Almost certainly third party candidates will disappear.  Currently, minor party candidates have almost no chance of winning, but they are still allowed to run, they are still allowed to make their positions known to the best of their ability despite being shut out by the mainstream media.

If neither of the “top two” candidates reflects your principles, shouldn’t you at least have the right to make a statement with your vote regardless of your candidate’s chances of winning? Toss into this mix this interesting factoid; Michael Bloomberg, who is spending millions to impose universal gun registration of the type used in New York for mass confiscations has put well over a million bucks into promoting this measure.  Bloomberg does not exactly have a reputation of wanting to expand the voice of the people.

Oregon’s independent voters clearly need more access to the process. Some kind of “open primary” may be the way to achieve that.  But Measure 90 seems to be nothing more than a way to limit choices. All too often we feel like we are stuck with the “lesser of two evils.”   Measure 90 almost guarantees it.

You can find your current legislators and district here. Use the box in the lower right corner that says “Find My Legislators.”

9.25.14

The anti-gun left, always eager to assail the funding of Republican candidates by affluent out-of-staters, has been very quiet about California billionaire Tom Steyer’s attempt to buy the Oregon Senate.

A May 22, 2014 New York Times article stated that Steyer’s goal is to spend $100 MILLION dollars to “defeat those who question or deny the established science of climate change.”

Leave it to the tolerant left to want to punish anyone who even “questions” their orthodoxy in spite of the fact that “climate change” is far from the “established science” the New York Times says it is.

It’s this sort of “established science” that has “scientists”  calling for a ban on lead ammo while admitting that such bans have produced no results.  “A partial ban went into effect in July 2008 and was later expanded. So far, however, researchers have found no evidence that the ban has resulted in a reduction in blood lead levels in condors.”

One such “scientist” (Myra  Finkelstein), who testified at a recent hearing in Oregon in favor of banning lead ammunition, may have set a new record for highly dubious “facts” when she said: “We found that over the course of 10 years, if just one half of one percent of carcasses have lead in them, the probability that each free-flying condor will be exposed is 85 to 98 percent, and one exposure event could kill a condor.”

Even the United Nations is getting into the lead banning act:“With respect to lead ammunition, the most effective way of reducing risks to migratory birds is to create legislative processes to restrict sale, possession and/or use of lead ammunition to ensure lead ammunition is not left un-retrieved within the environment.

Now the folks who are using agenda-driven politics masquerading as “science” are planning to drop a boat load of money in Oregon to defeat Republican Senators and replace them with anti-gun extremists.

The Oregonian is reporting that Steyer’s group, NextGen Climate, “announced Wednesday that it will work with Oregon environmentalists to try to unseat Republican state Sens. Bruce Starr of Hillsboro and Betsy Close of Albany…NextGen announced it would partner with the Oregon League of Conservation Voters on a series of get-out-the-vote activities and TV ads to support Starr’s challenger, former Democratic Rep. Chuck Riley, and Close’s Democratic opponent, Rep. Sara Gelser of Corvallis.”

As you know, the current makeup of the Oregon Senate is 16 Democrats and 14 Republicans. Exactly one Democrat, Betsy Johnson, is pro-gun. That means that with the loss of a single Republican Senator, Oregon could become the next Connecticut.  Except for Johnson, every other Democrat Senator is committed to attacking gun rights.

Betsy Close has been one of the strongest voices in defense of the Second Amendment our legislature has ever had. Betsy recently held a fundraiser where women were taught firearms skills. In contrast, her opponent, Sara Gelser, has attempted to punish foster parents who own firearms.

Bruce Starr has been a consistent pro-gun vote while his challenger, Chuck Riley, has aligned himself with far-left, anti-gun activists.

The anti-gunners are incredibly wealthy and willing to tell any lie to promote their liberty smashing agenda. It is essential that we, as Second Amendment supporters, retain these seats.

If you live in either Close or Starr’s district, please be sure to cast your vote for them. Put up a lawn sign and talk to your family and neighbors. And remember, you can help support and elect good candidates by making a donation to OFFPAC, where every dime goes for gun rights and contributions qualify for a tax credit. These races will be won by a small number of votes.  Please do all you can to make sure anti-gun extremists do not prevail.

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