03.05.2020
It’s entirely possible that this message will be obsolete by the time you read it.
Things are happening very quickly and everything is subject to change.
We’ll start with the positive news and move on from there.
As you know, OFF challenged the ballot title for IP 40. This ballot measure (it is not a legislative bill) would require that you keep your self-defense firearms locked up and useless. It would hold you “strictly liable” for misuse of your guns by other people. (Challenges were filed by both OFF and the NRA.)
Today the Oregon Supreme Court responded with an opinion that agreed in large part with our arguments.
That opinion can be seen here. This is a positive development because now, should this measure make the ballot, Oregon voters will have a clearer idea of how bad it is.
In the legislature, today was all drama. The House Rules Committee held a “hearing” with invited testimony only. As you can imagine, the only testimony invited was testimony that supported the Democrat’s position.
The Oregon House Democrats had issued “subpoenas” to the House Republicans who walked out in protest of the outrageous behavior of the ruling party. Since the beginning of the session, the Democrats have worked to ram through radical legislation with little discussion or input. (One Republican House Member, Cheri Helt, stayed behind with the Democrats.)
The stated intention of this hearing was to have the subpoenaed Republicans show up to be grilled by the Democrats. To no one’s surprise, no Republican legislators were there, but many of their supporters were.
Attorney John DiLorenzo submitted a letter explaining why the subpoenas were not enforceable, but of course was not invited to testify.
Both the Senate and House Republicans announced today that they would be willing to return before the session ended to vote on important budget bills (which should have been done early in the session) but within minutes of the Rules Committee closing its hearing, the House Speaker “adjourned” until 11.59 PM Sunday when the session must officially end.
The Senate President soon did the same.
By all accounts, this should mean the session is over and no more bills can be passed.
However, while this particular legislative session has ended, and no anti-gun bills passed, rest assured the Governor and the Oregon Democrats will be using any trick or procedural move they can to somehow enact their very dangerous and unpopular bills. There can be calls for “special sessions” or even “emergencies” declared.
So while we may be out of the woods as of right now, anything can still happen.
The Democrats are furious that the Republicans stood up to them and protected your rights and pocketbook and it’s certainly possible that this is not over.
Earlier today we told you about our challenges to the ballot titles of IP 61 and 62. While we are grateful for all the support and words of encouragement, we do have to report that we have hit a snag on this process.
Although we are very pleased by the outcome of our challenges to IP 40 and are looking forward to similar success with our challenges to IP 60, the simple fact is, our challenges to IP 61 and 62 were filed a day after the deadline. We learned of this after we sent out this morning’s alert. We take full responsibility for the error and we are working overtime on alternatives to the challenges we filed.
As you can imagine, this is not the outcome we, and you, would have wanted. But rest assured we are looking at every option to correct this.
We do believe that IP 60, which contained all the bad elements of 61 and 62, was the main goal of the gun grabbers, and 61 and 62 were back-ups in the event IP 60 was blocked. However we will still be doing everything in our power to stand in the way of all anti-gun measures and we thank you for your understanding.
Please stay tuned as the landscape could change very quickly and very dramatically.