Oregon’s Measure 114 was a heinous bit of law pushed through by urban centers and directly screwing over rural folks in the state. What’s more, it was a terrible infringement on the Second Amendment.
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The good news is that it hasn’t fared particularly well in the courts. It’s just that bad.
Proponents argue that the measure will save lives, all despite there not being any viable evidence that it will do any such thing. I’m sorry, but biased studies even RAND doesn’t think cut the mustard help suggest otherwise.
But there’s also the fact that it’s unconstitutional, as the courts keep pointing out. The law hasn’t really done all that great in the courts, as noted, and now it’s gotten yet another setback.
A ruling by a state court judge placed Oregon’s tough new gun law on hold late Tuesday, just hours after a federal court judge allowed the ban on the sale and transfer of high-capacity magazines to take effect this week.
The ruling by Harney County Judge Robert Raschio threw the implementation of Measure 114 into limbo and Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in a Twitter thread that her office will seek emergency action by the Oregon Supreme Court.
Rosenblum will file an immediate appeal with the state’s high court seeking to “align the result in our state courts with the federal court’s well-reasoned and thoughtful decision,” the statement said. That filing is likely to come Wednesday morning.
“It’s been a busy day for Measure 114, Oregon’s new gun safety law, which is supposed to go into effect Thursday. A federal and a state judge both issued rulings today,” Rosenblum’s Twitter thread said. “As of now, the law cannot go into effect on Thursday.”
In other words, it was a bad day for Oregon gun grabbers. That makes me giggle.
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However, that doesn’t mean it will continue.
The measure is being challenged in both federal court (where a judge has allowed the law to take effect) and state court, where Judge Raschio has kept the law on hold. That means the state supreme court will be the ones to decide on this, and it’ll be based primarily on the state’s constitution. A particularly egregious decision might well make it before the U.S. Supreme Court–I’m looking at you, Hawaii–but for now, this is about the state’s constitution and I don’t know enough about Oregon’s case law to say definitively how the court will rule.
What I can say, though, is that Measure 114 is a terrible infringement on the right to keep and bear arms, one pushed through by ballot initiative via people who really don’t understand law, rights, or literally anything else.
Not that lawmakers are any better in that regard, admittedly, but it’s a lot easier to lobby and educate a couple hundred legislators than millions of voters.
So I won’t pretend to know how this will go. I’ll predict how this should go, however, and that is “down in flames.”
The only question is whether the Oregon Supreme Court will agree or not, and since this is Oregon, I have questions about whether that’s likely to happen. We’ll just have to wait and see.