04.26.2023
We are now facing legal assaults on multiple fronts.
In our lawsuit to stop the implementation of Measure 114, Oregon’s Department of Justice is using every unethical trick it can conjure to hyper inflate our legal bills and harass the plaintiffs standing up for your rights.
Among other games they are playing, they are demanding that plaintiffs provide information on virtually every firearm they own! A harassment technique that has exactly nothing to do with whether Measure 114 is constitutional and everything to do with creating security nightmares for the plaintiffs, which include several sheriffs who regularly face threats against their lives.
They are conducting lengthy depositions with our plaintiffs in an effort to force our attorneys to spend many hours monitoring the actions of the state’s lawyers, who are clearly attempting to intimidate and discredit us with intrusive inquires that are totally unrelated to the case.
The court is requiring our lawyers to spend endless hours researching issues that should be, under the Supreme Court’s recent rulings, entirely the responsibility of the state.
It’s clear that Oregon’s Department of “Justice” is mainly concerned with eliminating what resources we have. But now the anti-gunners have doubled down.
You may recall that voters twice passed Second Amendment Sanctuary Ordinances in Columbia County.
The Columbia County Commissioners rewrote them and then conspired with national anti-gun groups to challenge in court, the very ordinance they wrote. It was one of the most outrageous bait and switch games in memory.
But a lower court saw through the charade and refused to go along. So the State appealed and the Appeals Court overturned the lower court and essentially invalidated all the protections the people of Columbia County voted for twice. You will recall that one judge on that decision accused gun owners of being racist, anti-semitic, white supremacists.
Now that same court will decide if we are responsible for over $100,000.00 in lawyer fees. Included in their attacks are private citizens of Columbia County who joined our efforts as plaintiffs.
To make matters even more bizarre and Kafkaesque, we never even supported the ordinance the Commission wrote. We only supported the ballot measures the people passed which the Commission changed and with the help of anti-gun groups challenged in court.
If the clearly biased Oregon Court of Appeals approves these unprecedented attacks, it will have a devastating effect on any plaintiff’s willingness to step up in any effort to protect civil rights. Not to mention our ability to keep funding our federal lawsuit.
Even if the court does NOT grant the anti-gun groups the fees they are demanding, we still have to pay even more legal fees just to fight this insane demand.
On top of all that, we are still paying for a separate lawsuit that was filed against OFF by an attorney whose conduct forced us to fire him.
While we are quite confident that we will prevail in that case, we still are being forced to cover the ongoing legal bills to fight that attack.
These cases have national implications. As you know, similar battles are being fought all over the country with varying results. But now, faced with not only our Federal lawsuits but two other lawsuits whose only goal is harassment, we are being crushed financially.
More than ever we urgently need the most generous support you can provide. We can count on no help from our “friends” in the legislature, most of whom have either given up or are actually supporting democrat bills. It’s truly down to us.
Your very freedom is at stake and if we lose our ability to fund these fights, all of us could become criminals overnight.
This is our most urgent request ever. You can support these critical battles here: https://oregonfirearms.ejoinme.org/MyPages/DonationPage/tabid/70447/Default.aspx
Donations to any of our organizations help in this fight, but donations to the Oregon Firearms Educational Foundation are tax deductible .
Thank you for your continued support and dedication to liberty.