EDITORIAL: Measure 114 needs to be delayed

Published 12:15 pm Wednesday, November 30, 2022

A federal judge needs to put a temporary halt on Measure 114, Oregon’s history-making gun control law that voters narrowly passed Nov. 8.

Judge Karin J. Immergut has scheduled a hearing for Thursday, Dec. 2, to consider a motion filed by attorneys for plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the measure. That’s just six days before the law is slated to take effect.

The plaintiffs — the Oregon Firearms Federation, Sheriff Brad Lohrey of Sherman County, and a Keizer gun store owner — are seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block the measure’s provisions from taking effect.

Although there is legal precedent establishing that citizens’ Second Amendment rights are not unlimited — background checks, for instance, have been required for decades, and restrictions on buying certain types of guns, in some places, have also passed legal muster — Measure 114, if it takes effect in full on Dec. 8, almost certainly would create a situation in which it’s not possible for anyone to legally by a gun from a licensed dealer in Oregon.

Such an outright ban on buying firearms, even if it’s temporary, seems unequivocally unconstitutional.

The issue is the requirement that gun buyers first obtain a permit and pass a police-approved gun safety class. These are the most controversial aspects of Measure 114, which voters in 29 of Oregon’s 36 counties, including Baker, rejected.

(The measure passed, by about 27,000 votes out of 1.9 million cast, due to strong support in Multnomah County, the state’s most populous.)

The problem is that county sheriff’s offices, which will issue the permits, won’t have a system in place to do so by Dec. 8. Details about the classes that the measure requires aren’t clear, nor will such classes be readily available in less than a week.

The end result, then, if the law takes effect Dec. 8, is that residents who want to legally buy a gun won’t be able to meet Measure 114 requirements, meaning gun sellers won’t have any customers.

Imagine if the section in the Bill of Rights at stake here wasn’t the Second Amendment, but the First.

It would be patently unconstitutional to deprive citizens of their right to free speech, even temporarily, while the government figured out a system of classes and permits that people needed to comply with to exercise that right.

The comparison is imperfect, to be sure.

There is considerably more legal precedent for limits on the Second Amendment than on the First.

But to reiterate, the scenario shaping up in Oregon, if Measure 114 takes effect Dec. 8, isn’t a new limit on people using their Second Amendment rights, but rather the outright removal of an obviously integral aspect of those rights, which is to legally buy a gun.

It will take time for the judicial system to determine whether any part of Measure 114 is constitutional.

But until those decisions are made, the measure shouldn’t be allowed to take effect.