A third lawsuit challenging Oregon’s Measure 114 was filed on Thursday by the Oregon State Shooting Association, the state’s affiliate of the National Rifle Association (NRA).
As The New American noted regarding the requirements of Measure 114,
Anyone who wishes to purchase a firearm would first have to gain permission to do so by paying a fee of $65, completing an application, attending an “approved” firearms safety course at his own expense, submitting a photo ID and fingerprints, and then passing an in-depth background check that includes questions about his mental health.
Regrettably, the lawsuit filed on Thursday reveals that the “permission process” is vastly more complex than reported:
Measure 114 imposes severe and unprecedented burdens on individuals seeking to exercise perhaps the most basic right guaranteed by the Second Amendment: the right to lawfully acquire a firearm.
Although Measure 114 bills itself as creating a “shall issue” licensing regime that awards applicants a five-year “permit-to-purchase” firearms, in reality it erects a Kafkaesque regime that finds no support in history, tradition, or even modern regulation and that suffers from literally every defect the Supreme Court just identified as antithetical to the Second Amendment.
Under Measure 114, an individual must obtain a “permit-to-purchase” before she may acquire a firearm by any means. Obtaining this permit is no mean feat. To start, before an individual can even submit an application for the new permit, she first must complete a “firearms training course” that satisfies various strict new criteria…. But the state does not provide any such courses, and none that satisfies its demanding new criteria currently exists.
Even if one managed to take this as-yet-non-existent course, there would still be many hurdles yet to clear. Next up is submitting to fingerprinting and photographing by the sheriff or police chief, who must then ask the Department of State Police (“DSP”) to conduct a criminal background check…. That alone could delay any ability to exercise Second Amendment rights indefinitely, since Measure 114 neither imposes any time constraint on DSP to conduct the check nor creates a mechanism to force DSP to act.
Space does not permit listing the additional requirements to obtain permission to exercise a Second Amendment right, but the lawsuit sums it up nicely:
The net result is that, come just one week from now [Thursday, December 8], no one will be able to lawfully purchase a firearm in Oregon. [Emphasis in original.]
That’s how Oregon voters responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen: by embracing one of the strictest gun laws in the nation instead of celebrating the high court’s affirmation of the Second Amendment.
Last Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut heard two hours of arguments in the first lawsuit brought against the Oregon gun-control law, filed by the Oregon Firearms Federation. She said she will rule shortly on the matter, likely before the law becomes effective.
Judge Immergut is going to be busy. A fourth lawsuit against the gun-control law was filed late Friday, by Sportsmen’s Warehouse, and other lawsuits are pending.
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