What’s Coming
12.13.2024
While it is always a risky business to make predictions in this tumultuous political environment, you don’t have to be Nostradamus to see that 2025 is going to be a very bad year for gun owners (and gun dealers) in Oregon.
The reappointment of Christine Drazan as House Minority Leader signals the House Republican’s total surrender to the Democrat agenda.
The newly appointed House “leadership” team does not include a single committed fighter.
The Senate Republicans once again chose as their Deputy Leader, David Brock Smith. Smith, you will recall, insisted on remaining on the Senate Floor even as some of his more principled colleagues walked out. Smith’s main interest as a legislator has always been…Smith. Holding onto his office and being able to funnel taxpayer money directly into his own pocket is far more important to Smith than the wellbeing of his constituents.
So what can we expect?
On Wednesday the Democrats introduced the first of their anti-gun bills for the 2025 session.
These two identical bills were introduced in the Senate and House Judiciary Committees as “Committee Bills”. This is how legislators get bills through the process without having to put their names on them.
You can see the two drafts here and here. (They are the same bills.)
These two bills are “place holders” designed to be “gut and stuffed”. All that will remain will be the “relating clause” which is “Relating to Firearms.”
The rest of the language will be removed. We believe these bills will be vehicles used by the Oregon State Police to impose extensive new obstacles to completing firearms transfer background checks.
Essentially we expect Governor Kotek to use the State Police to enact into law, a whole host of new restrictions and complications. Many of the tactics that the OSP uses now to prevent transfers from taking place will be codified into law so transfers (which for many are already a nightmare) will take longer and be more complex for everyone. No doubt the OSP will demand an end to the law that allows for transfers after three days if they don’t do their job and likely a request for lengthy “waiting periods” for all transfers.
If you look at cartel media outlets you may have noticed that many of them are issuing press releases for anti-gun groups disguised as “news”.
These releases revolve around the false stories anti-gun groups are pushing to shut down gun stores by implying that some dealers are regularly providing guns to criminals. Of course the “research” these groups provide to illustrate their lies are “reports” they created themselves.
In a recent press release authored by anti-gun hack Maxine Bernstein of the failing Oregonian, she unwittingly noted in her story that the ATF themselves refute the “statistics” in the fake reports by the anti-gun groups. But the reality that multiple legacy “news” sources are issuing these deceitful releases is a good indication that the left is planning new attacks on firearms dealers.
FFL’s should prepare themselves for legislation to throttle them and push onerous new restrictions on them in an effort to force as many as possible out of business. We predict new and complex rules on employees, security, and likely demands for costly video recording.
Given past efforts, we also anticipate that the legislature will try to impose all the unconstitutional provisions of Measure 114 that are currently held up in court. Nothing stops the politicians from implementing laws they know are unconstitutional. They can do what they want. It then becomes the job of the victims of their legislation to spend millions in court to fight them. If past is prologue you can also expect Senator Floyd Prozanski to include provisions that forbid Oregonians from challenging these measures in any court except one approved by… Prozanski.
The Democrats have increased their majorities in both Houses. Recent comments by Republicans indicate they plan to work with the Democrats instead of standing in their way. Far left Senator Sara Gelser was just recorded gushing over her deep “friendship” with Republican Senator Tim Knopp who single handily engineered the Senate Republican’s collapse in the last session and praising his son Reagan, who started a fake gun group to prop up bad Republican candidates. The love fest continues and you are not invited.
But as grim as all this news is, remember that while Republicans don’t have enough votes to stop the new taxes the Democrats will be passing, they do still have enough votes to deny quorum and put the brakes on this insanity. The ball is in their court.