Living in a Democrat controlled State is not easy for a gunmaker. Oregon has had fantastic gun laws. The hunting, fishing and shooting culture flourished in this State and is deeply ingrained in the rural communities. Despite the left leaning politics of the State, a streak of libertarianism used to prevail. But here comes the modern Left that has taken over the Democrat party. In every session of the legislators new anti gun bills have been introduced by Democrat politicians. In Oregon the Democrats have by now the super majority. That means they control the house, the senate and the governorship. Over the years many left leaning and agenda driven judges have been appointed. There are a few freedom loving Republican politicians at work and they do what they can, but their leadership is ineffective, unorganized and it lacks vision and imagination.
A few months ago the Democrats introduced SB554. This bill makes the concealed carrying of handguns by licensed and law abiding citizens very difficult and expensive. Included in the bill also are incriminating storage mandates for guns at home and during transport. Worst of all, if a firearms has been stolen, the gun owner is liable for the loss and will be fined. The goal of the bill is to infringe on the use of guns for self defense under the pretense to reduce crime. The ultimate goal of course is to incrementally disarm the public. Keep in mind, this bill was introduced and passed by the same politicians that allow the riots in Portland to go on daily and turn their backs to millions of dollars of property damages incurred. Reducing crime certainly is not on their radar. It is being estimated that up to 2.5 million crimes annually are prevented by the use of firearms by law-abiding citizens. Of course this will never make the News outlets.
So why do I write this? Yes, I do know that mixing business with politics is stupid. But can you really blame me, if my livelihood is being threatened by the enemies of freedom on a daily base? Of course I never should post words like this on my blog. But can you really fault me for caring about my beloved country, for trying to bring awareness to my brothers and sisters? And for how I fear for my children’s future? Lately I often ponder how much longer a simple blog about craftsmanship and traditional hunting guns will be tolerated by our overlords! Let me show you this:
As you can see, the counties in Oregon are primarily red (conservative). Yet the population centers in Portland, Salem, Eugene and Bend control the State. Bill SB554 was introduced in a committee consisting of a majority of Democrats. We the citizens of the Sate could weigh in on the bill per oral and written testimony for or against the bill. I did both and testified against the bill. The ratio of the citizenry opposing the bill was about 4:1. There where hundreds of testimonies given. Therefore, in a representative Republic as we supposedly have, this bill should have been dead in the water at this point and should never have made it out of the committee. Not so, the Democrats passed it in committee and rammed it through the house and the senate. Currently it is on the governors desk for signing, which Kate Brown will do so gladly.
It begs the questions: Do we still have representative government? Are the majority of counties still represented? If you live rural, do you count at all?
I did what I could. What troubles me however is that most of my friends and colleagues didn’t lift a finger. There should not have been hundreds but thousands of testimonies. We will certainly lose the Republic if we don’t engage and instead watch Netflix and read silly posts on Facebook. You may disagree with me, and that is fine. We do so politely and without malice and perhaps we can engage sometime into an interesting discussion. I would like to close with a quote from our State Senator Dennis Linthicum:
“We must stand against the absurdities that are demanded daily. We must stand for the self-evident truth that we witness, the common-sense we utilize, and our own just pursuits and economic enterprises regardless of the crushing weight of the statist bureaucrats. To pursue justice without regard for the individual is statism and statism requires, “a certain kind of universe: a universe of non-fact, non-thing, non-identity,” which is a self-annihilating lust for power known as, Utopianism.”