Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum of Oregon said in a statement the above and added. “We are confident the Oregon Constitution — like the Second Amendment of the U.S. constitution — allows these reasonable regulations.”
I don’t know if I would be confident in that Madam AG, that whole “shall not be infringed” section doesn’t just magically become void if you state that what you’re doing isn’t infringement. That’s not how it works. Sure you got your liberal urban voters, who couldn’t pass an elementary school level test on the subject, to approve your measure without a critical thought passing through their heads. But that’s the wonderful thing about constitutional republics you see, the tyranny (or idiocy in many cases) of the majority can be challenged and beaten.
Capacity restrictions and permitting requirements have no such track record. The strongest evidence in our possession suggests that safe storage laws have some influence on injury rates among minors and that pretty much ends what we know has a positive influence from gun control.
Illinois has one of the most stringent permitting schemes in the nation, the FOID, and Chicago is still crying out about how it isn’t nearly good enough and how ‘People with terrifying firearms of immense power are hunting the residents of Illinois!‘
Where is this data that says 10 rounds is safe and that we are curbing violence with it? Where is this data that says a permission slip to exercise a constitutional right is saving oh so many lives? Where is peer review on the data showing it, the prohibitions and pieces of paper, are protecting people from homicide?
Luckily for the rational folks who understand what infringement means, the Oregon courts have put a pause on it.
The Oregon measure bans the sale, transfer or import of magazines over 10 rounds unless they are owned by law enforcement or a military member (who never do anything wrong, unless its ACAB time) or were owned before the measure’s passage. Those who already possess high-capacity magazines can have them only in their homes or use them at firing ranges, in shooting competitions, or for hunting, as allowed by state law after the measure takes effect (which makes this whole thing rather moot as magazines are durable goods and the next tragedy will be leveraged to remove grandfathering).
It would also close a federal loophole that allows gun transfers to proceed if background checks cannot be completed quickly.
That loophole is in place to make certain the Fed can’t just forget a background check and leave it in limbo, which happens every day. There were dozens of checks that didn’t get a resolution when I was behind a gun counter, there were plenty of times NICS wasn’t working at all as their computers were in the midst of yet another operating crisis. We should totally suspend people’s right to a firearm for use in their defense over technical difficulties though, right? It’s only safe.
NICS and state systems have never passed a mass killer after all. Hint: It was 77% of the time according to a 1966-2019 NIJ review. Mass killers got their gun legally and passed all checks 77% of the time, acquiring their weapon another way in only 23% of instances. Making for 100% damned if you do damned if you don’t, it’s almost like a motivated killer can’t be stopped if they are otherwise free to act as they wish regardless of the circumstances of that freedom.
But I’m sure limiting magazines to 10 rounds, except all the ones that aren’t, and removing the Brady transfer mechanism that was put into place specifically to not violate anyone’s rights through an arbitrary system failure will solve things. The permit-to-purchase requirement is another one that is especially interesting, because I don’t think they actually came up with a state method for that. They made it a requirement without having a process in place, fantastic execution of authority team. Way to keep the confidence levels high.
The Supreme Court decision on the New York law signaled a shift in how the nation’s high court will evaluate Second Amendment infringement claims as they now require a much stricter scrutiny, that judges can no longer declare a law ‘serves public interests like enhancing public safety’ without strong evidence and instead must weigh whether the law is “consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding.”
That was a huge win in Bruen, and the follow-up reckoning from the bench that lower courts should reexamine recent 2A cases under that guidance before the Supreme Court starts handing out more defeats was telling. ‘Public Interest’ has always been a catch all defense that have allowed courts to drop cases and side with the government for nebulous and ill-defined reasons.
Because of course if it was for ‘the greater good’
we should shelve things like logic and evidence, or lack there of, and do the thing you consider to be in the publics interest. Funny that if something you don’t think is in the publics best interest comes along you suddenly don’t think folks should just be able to declare it so, but I’m sure that is not hypocrisy talking or anything.
Anyway, Oregon government is the biggest of mad that their new rule is probably going to get the SCOTUS ban hammer if they don’t get it sorted before hand and that is just wonderful.
