By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
By a 32-28 vote, the Oregon House of Representatives passed a controversial “universal background check” measure that Gov. Kate Brown had indicated she would sign, and in the aftermath, the anti-gun Everytown for Gun Safety is crowing.
Almost simultaneously, the gun control lobbying group in neighboring Washington revealed what will likely be the next trophy on its legislative agenda: so-called “safe storage.”
Following the Oregon victory, Everytown sent an e-mail blast declaring, “This is an incredible victory for Oregon — but also for gun sense across the country — because it shows what happens when we come together to stand up to the gun lobby. Not only do we win, we win BIG.”
Senate Bill 941, the so-called “universal background check” measure that Brown indicated she will sign, did not pass without criticism. Several opponents were quoted by the Portland Oregonian, explaining that passage of the legislation provides only the illusion of accomplishment.
“This is going to have zero impact on the bad people,” Forest Grove physician and gun collector James Caro told a reporter, “but it’s going to create a lot of hassle, particularly for people in rural Oregon.”
“The tragedies at Sandy Hook, at Clackamas Town Center would not have been stopped by this bill,” added House Minority Leader Mike McLane (R-Powell Butte).
Last November in Washington, voters passed Initiative 594, which is currently being challenged in federal district court, after a $10 million-plus advertising campaign backed by wealthy Seattle-area elitists and by billionaire anti-gunner Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety.” That federal lawsuit is being spearheaded by the Second Amendment Foundation, with several other groups and individuals joining in the effort.
The anti-gun Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR) essentially revealed its next target is a safe storage law. The group is exploiting April’s non-injury shooting at North Thurston High School in Lacey, a community outside of Olympia, the state capitol. The teen responsible fired two rounds from a .357 Magnum taken from home without permission. He was tackled by a teacher, and subsequently jailed.
This was an intentional misuse of a firearm, just like last year’s shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Washington’s Snohomish County. However, critics might wonder whether WAGR is playing smoke and mirrors with its new effort? It cited a study of a safe storage law in Florida that “showed their rate of unintentional child firearm deaths dropped 51% compared to states with weaker laws. Overall, states with CAP laws in place for at least one year saw a 23% drop in unintentional firearm deaths among children younger than 15.”
By coincidence, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, in its weekly “Bullet Points” bulletin, noted the following: “Anti-gun groups are attempting to bolster their latest push to demonize firearms by trying to equate unintentional (accidental) motor vehicle deaths with firearm-related deaths.
“This apples-to-oranges comparison is absurd,” NSSF asserted, “and as the latest statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and National Safety Council show, because it requires that the intentional misuse of firearms for homicide and suicide be included. As CDC and NSC report, there were more than 35,000 deaths by unintentional injury in 2013 involving motor vehicles compared to a total of 505 (CDC’s number) among all age groups involving firearms.
“In NSC’s Injury Facts 2015 report, firearms are no longer even listed among the top causes of unintentional deaths,” the report added, “which are led by poisoning (more than 38,000 in 2013), motor vehicles, falls, choking, drowning, fire and suffocation. For children under 14, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of fatality, with more than 1,401 children dying by this cause in 2011. According to NSC, accidental firearm fatalities declined by 18 percent from 2004 to 2013. Among all these statistics, here is one to keep handy: Firearms are involved in only 0.4 percent of all unintentional fatalities.”
