GUNS/BARMS

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Oregon - Expanded Background Checks

Expanded background checks on guns, though imperfect, make sense: Editorial

By The Oregonian Editorial Board
April 04, 2015

It's ground hog day for the Oregon Legislature on this contentious subject.

Guns may be good, but keeping them out of the wrong hands is even better. That's why the Oregon Legislature should bring three years of off-and-on bickering to a close and pass a bill designed to expand gun background checks.

The issue is not freedom. It is not the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ensuring citizens the right to bear arms. Neither is it a state government bureaucracy bent on complicating already time-intensive checks initiated at over-the-counter sales sites. Instead the issue is society's regrettable need to keep guns out of the hands of more folks who, by their criminal or mental illness histories, carry with them the risk of bringing harm to others.

Nobody really wanted the conversation to go here. Gun culture in Oregon is mature and is as much a part of the state's character as its celebrated mountains and rivers. But crazed public shootings here and nationally have prodded the drive for background checks.

States, among them Oregon, have made great strides in bolstering gun-owner accountability. Background checks at point-of-sale sites, including gun shows, are run through the Oregon State Police and can take weeks. But Senate Bill 941, sponsored by Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, closes what former Portland Police Chief Mike Reese correctly terms "a dangerous loophole" that allows criminals to obtain firearms in unrecorded transactions from strangers, in some cases initiated over the Internet.

It's foolish to assume SB941, titled the "Oregon Firearms Safety Act," could stop the next purposefully malevolent person from illegally obtaining a gun and committing a serious crime or horrific act. But the law would add another layer of protection by requiring all private would-be gun purchasers to submit to a background check, capturing a cohort far larger than a few convicted felons and deranged individuals - and sending the signal that gun ownership in Oregon is for those without serious criminal records or current mental health challenges.

Significantly, SB941 assigns some responsibility to the private gun-seller, who'd face prosecution for a Class A misdemeanor for failing to ensure completion of an intended buyer's background check. And SB941 would require that judges rule whether folks undergoing court-ordered outpatient treatment for mental disorders are fit to obtain firearms during their treatment. Still, several gun transfers would be exempt from the bill's reporting requirements, among them those between spouses, immediate relatives, members of the U.S. military and private security workers.

Oregonian editorials

Editorials reflect the collective opinion of The Oregonian editorial board, which operates independently of the newsroom.

Last Thursday, Rep. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer, introduced to the Senate Judiciary Committee an amendment that would have eliminated SB941's background checks but require the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles to include felony records on drivers' licenses, allowing a seller to demand identification and learn of a criminal history; Prozanski, as a courtesy, pushed off until Monday the committee's work session on his bill. By last Friday, however, Thatcher had withdrawn her amendment, telling The Oregonian/OregonLive's editorial board she'd be back with a new proposal eliminating Prozanski's bill in favor of modifying language in existing statues to place the full onus of legal private gun transfers on sellers.

It's groundhog day for the Oregon Legislature on this contentious subject. In March of last year, a bill not unlike SB941 fell at least one vote short of approval in the Senate, dooming last-minute efforts by Prozanski to push through simpler legislation that would have wisely required local police and sheriffs to receive notification if anyone within their jurisdictions had tried to purchase a firearm but failed a background check. Here, too, SB941 covers the bases in requiring as much.

Opponents to SB941 bill are passionate. Among other things, they decry an infringement upon rights and an invasive government wanting to control everything: Liberty and freedom, some of them say, are in a free-fall. While that debate extends beyond gun control to many corners of government, a narrow truth persists: Gun violence, and the imagined threat of attack by individuals who should not own guns, menaces many. Faux shoot-out drills in some school settings, which should signal an unhinging of public reason, are taken seriously by many public safety officials.

Thoughtful steps to help ensure guns are in good hands make sense. SB941 is one such step and should become law. If even one tragedy is avoided owing to its requirements, the extra paperwork, costs and delays will have been worth it.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/04/expanded_background_checks_on.html

Note: There are active links contained within the original article at the website posted above.

NOTE: Oregonians have voted against this in its many forms over the last few years, one of the reasons it keeps going forward is because the major voting power comes from the city of Portland and it's Metro area which are very Liberal and Anti-gun. However, the state is mostly conservative, but these fight have been close and the anti's keep pushing, and they can so with backing from Anti groups; right now the biggest financier of this bullchitt registration law is that pain in the ass Bloomberg.




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