Oregon gun prohibitionists are formally launching an initiative effort aimed at getting a gun ban measure on the November ballot, according to Willamette Week, essentially putting the lie to claims that “nobody wants to take your guns,” as suggested by one of the Beaver State’s most ardent gun rights groups.
Called the “The Interfaith and People of Goodwill Campaign to Ban Assault Weapons,” this campaign is likely to garner plenty of attention and attract the support of wealthy anti-gunners. Anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety has poured a small fortune into the Northwest over the past few years.
In an announcement from the Oregon Firearms Federation, the group recalled, “Those of you who remember the ballot measure to ban bear and cougar hunting with dogs, or the ballot measure to outlaw the private sales of firearms at gun shows will recall the shameless lies the anti-gun side told to con ignorant voters into giving up their rights. Millions in out of state money was spent and there was no end to the misleading visuals on wall-to-wall TV ads.”
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“The extremists promoting this confiscation attempt are hoping to capitalize on the wave of anti-rights protests by school children being orchestrated by Bloomberg funded operatives.”—Oregon Firearms Federation
This comes just one day after Bob Ferguson, the anti-gun attorney general in neighboring Washington State, predicted that this fall’s Evergreen State ballot might also see an initiative that could be aimed at banning modern sporting rifles, which have been repeatedly mislabeled as “assault rifles,” according to gun rights activists.
“The plan is to make Oregon as much like California as possible. The potential of this ballot measure is impossible to calculate. In states with these kinds of bans, there has been massive noncompliance but a massive loss of freedom.”—Oregon Firearms Federation
Ferguson told a reporter for KING 5 News, the NBC affiliate in Seattle, “I support the right to bear arms. I support the Second Amendment…but, within that Second Amendment, just like there are limits on the First Amendment, freedom of speech, there can be common sense limits to that constitutional right.”
He is among many politicians who “support the Second Amendment…but,” say critics.
The Pacific Northwest has become a hotbed of gun prohibition activism. At a KIRO Town Hall meeting Wednesday evening in Seattle, broadcast live to Puget Sound area viewers by the CBS affiliate, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee reminded the audience that he voted to ban “assault weapons” in 1994 while serving in Congress and that he is committed to that. That vote cost Inslee his congressional seat in the Tri-City area of Eastern Washington.
A Pew Research poll taken in June 2017 shows that overall, 68 percent of Americans support a ban on so-called “assault rifles.” But the breakdown shows 48 percent of gun owners support the ban while 77 percent of non-gun owners (who would not be affected by a gun ban) favor the prohibition.
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