Well that explains a lot
Category: Goobermint
Observation O’ The Day
The law — and the DOJ — only protects people the Administration likes.
That’s been made quite clear.
DOJ Official Admits Targeting Pro-Lifers Is Response to Overturn of Roe.
The Justice Department has been targeting pro-life activists through the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act as a response to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, according to Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta.
Gupta delivered remarks at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s 65th Anniversary earlier this month. The associate attorney general described the overturn of Roe v. Wade as a “devastating blow to women throughout the country” that took away “the constitutional right to abortion” and increased “the urgency” of the DOJ’s work—including the “enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.”
She did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division enforces the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services.”
It protects both pro-life pregnancy centers and abortion clinics, as a DOJ official noted to Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, last week.
At least 98 Catholic churches and 77 pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life organizations have been attacked since May, but the DOJ has apparently not charged a single person in connection with these attacks. Meanwhile, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has charged 26 pro-life individuals with FACE Act violations this year.
The DOJ has not responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment on this point.
Pregnancy resource centers are typically run by pro-life women who seek to offer expectant mothers alternatives to abortion. Such centers provide diapers, baby clothes, and resources for both mothers and fathers, empowering them to care for their child, overcome addictions, build community, and find jobs.
Is There Anything We can do to Stop Mass Murderers in the United States?
That question comes to mind since President Biden recently claimed we need to massively disarm honest US citizens in order to stop mass-murderers. Instead of accepting the President’s words at face value, I looked at what the experts say. There are many questions we might ask and lots of facts we can consider. We do many things today to stop violence in the US. There is more we could do, and this is what I found;
- We stop several thousand violent events every day.
- The United States is about average in its rate of mass murder.
- We stop more than half of the attempted mass murderers who attack where honest citizens are allowed to go armed.
- Most mass murderers go through a predictable process, and we ignored warning signs time after time.
- We should stop making the murderers into overnight celebrities, but that is hard to do.
A Walmart employee murdered several of his co-workers in Virginia. That happened a few weeks ago. President Biden then commented that,
“[T]he idea we still allow semi automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”
The president’s comment sounds bizarre given what we know. We know that more than 5,000 ordinary US citizens use a firearm to protect themselves from a serious threat every day. Stopping that much assault, robbery, rape and murder every day sounds like an immense socially redeeming value to me. The president obviously disagrees.
That level of armed defense shouldn’t come as news. We’ve seen similar reports for the last few decades. The data is broadly consistent, including a report from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention that was commissioned by the Obama Administration.
All of us are biased, but we have good reason to be. We think that what we see in the news gives us a representative picture of what is happening in the world overall. It feels that way to us, but in truth there is a lot of news that goes unreported by our local news stations. Our news media covers a mass murder in the US for days but they only cover a mass murder that happened in another country for a few minutes. That distorts our thinking about where violence happens.
Biden Administration Continues Push to Target Firearms with Attached Stabilizing Braces
It seems like we have been warning about the Biden Administration’s intent to reclassifyhandguns equipped with braces intended to help disabled veteran shooters for quite some time.
There were once signs that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) intended to get out of the practice of making confusing regulations—including those involving stabilizing braces—that appeared to circumvent the authority of Congress to actually define and pass laws regarding firearms. But with Biden’s election in 2020, a reinvigorated faction within ATF began a push to re-examine stabilizing braces. NRA immediately took notice, and put out a call to action.
Way back in June of 2021, Biden’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) published a new notice of proposed rulemaking on its website entitled Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached “Stabilizing Braces”. The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on June 10, 2021, giving interested parties until September 8, 2021 to file comments.
The rule seemed aimed at making nearly all configurations of firearms equipped with stabilizing braces subject to the taxation and registration requirements of the National Firearms Act.
Since 2012, when Biden was serving as then-President Barack Obama’s vice president, ATF has recognized that stabilizing braces serve a legitimate function, and the inclusion of a stabilizing brace on a pistol or other firearm does not automatically subject that firearm to the provisions of the NFA. That’s because stabilizing braces were first designed and intended to help disabled veterans fire large format pistols.
While ATF estimates that there are approximately three million pistol stabilizing braces, even other portions of the United States government recognize that this is a vast undercounting of the number of pistol braces currently in circulation. A report by the Congressional Research Service puts the estimate much higher; suggesting anywhere from 10 to 40 million pistol stabilizing braces. With so many in circulation, effectively banning firearms with these devices attached would be the largest confiscatory firearm regulation in the history of the United States.
NRA, of course, submitted comments to this terrible proposed rule, which you can find here.
More than one year since the comment period ended, and a year-and-a-half since the original proposed rulemaking, it is still unclear when, or how, the new rule will be implemented.
In January of this year, we reported, in a story on different rules Biden’s ATF had put in place, that the regulations page for the proposed stabilizing brace rule indicated it would be finalized in August.
That didn’t happen.
Now the regulations page says “Final Action” will take place on “12/00/2022.” What date that actually signifies is unclear, but it would appear the final rule remains in a holding pattern.
There may be other complications facing Biden’s ATF when it comes to this pending rule, other than the general complexity and poor optics of potentially criminalizing millions of Americans (especially disabled veterans) for owning items that same ATF previously said they could legally acquire and own.
The rule has now been transferred to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review. That means that the final rule could be posted in the federal register in the coming days.
With the House of Representatives coming under pro-gun leadership, scrutiny of this federal agency is likely to get much more intense. When the House was under the control of radical, anti-gun extremists like soon-to-be-former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), virtually any anti-gun action taken by ATF was encouraged—even if it seemed to circumvent the authority granted by Congress.
A recent article noted Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) “is targeting newly-confirmed U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Steve Dettelbach over new gun rules that Jordan calls ‘a deliberate attempt to usurp the authority of Congress and infringe on American citizens’ fundamental Second Amendment rights.’”
Jordan will be serving as House Judiciary Chairman when the new Congress convenes in January, so it would behoove Dettelbach to take his stated concerns seriously.
The article mentions a letter Jordan sent Dettelbach outlining a number of concerns the Chairman-to-be has regarding ATF. Included among those concerns is the pending rule on stabilizing braces. Jordan notes that no federal law has been passed that “criminalized the use of a pistol arm-stabilizing brace.”
In an earlier letter to ATF on the subject of these braces, Jordan wrote, “Through its proposed rule, ATF seeks to subject stabilizing braces to GCA criminal penalties and NFA regulation without Congressional prohibition of the underlying activity.”
Other than the prospect of facing a House majority that does not work in lockstep with anti-gun activists, the ATF may be facing additional problems with what many consider to be overreach of its use of rulemaking. Recent actions by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) may indicate the nation’s top court may try to reign in federal rulemakers, which could include those at ATF.
Whatever develops on this front, you can count on NRA to remain involved, and to keep you updated.
I really like how the goobermint can come up with an “8.7%” inflation rate for COLAs when my grocery bill has gone up by 30+% and gas by 100%
BLUF
The economy seems to be slipping into a Carterian perfect economic storm: prices and interest rates jumping in unison, with lingering structural supply issues leaving shelves half-stocked.
The Bernank Can No Longer Hibernate
The animated ursine explainers were right. And a billionaire-backed business-first broadsheet confirms it.
Christmas has come early for Ron Paulers in the most libertarian way: their past contrarian construals are vindicated by everyone suffering. Surely Justin Amash has a path to the presidency in 2024 now!
This Thanksgiving, more budgets were busted than the front button on stretch-fit Dockers. If you didn’t notice because mommy and daddy footed the 20% higher turkey tab this year, your attention may be arrested by the $70 sum on new PS5 games. That is, inflation has not abated despite the summer passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which, in a twist of marketing nominative nondeterminism, had zilch to do with quelling swelling prices.
The consumer price index punched in at 6.3% in October, when compared to last year. While that percentage bump is less than the nearly 10% YTD rate in June, the cost jumps are still historically high. And if you’ll excuse me… *unrolls a sheet of tinfoil, folds it firmly into the shape of a conical hat, turns the cooktop burner on to singe the tip so it generates extra-hot takes, places tightly on head.* Everyone knows (if you disagree, you’re not everyone, and therefore an outcast—the perfect phrasal conspiratorial cordon!) that the CPI is deliberately calculated to underplay the actual inflation rate. Volatile commodities are excluded to provide a more stable picture. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose abacus-brained technocrats fashion the CPI, use something called the “hedonic quality adjustment” to anticipate vittle variation—which really just sounds like a john settling for a veteran flesh house servicer than a fresher offering based upon his thin wallet.
The point is, the CPI is calculated in a closed room, under the inscrutable cover of green eyeshades. So that when the price of the 2022 Lego Guardians of the Galaxy Advent calendar you want to get for yourself your kids jumps up by $15 compared to similar block-sets, the headline rate may seem lower than what your lying eyes see. And we aren’t even touching on what’s known colloquially as “hidden inflation.” (If you need evidence of that concept, just look at the Reese’s Peanut Butter cup sizes over last Halloween versus the discs of gooey peanut butter we were treated as kids.)
Makes sense when “democracy” means demoncraps are in charge
The Twitter files: leftism requires censorship.
One of the funny (although not ‘funny ha-ha’) things about all of this is that these same people bleat on about ‘democracy’ and its great value and worth. And yet they think of the public as unable to sort out the wheat from the chaff, as children in need of control from – yes – Big Brother Twitter. And they’re not the least bit ashamed about it. They had to do it to save democracy.
America’s Ruling Regime Doesn’t Fear Disinformation. It Fears Truth.
In Joe Biden’s America, attempting to cancel Joe Rogan is just counter-terror policy.
This is because our ruling class—in the name of “defending democracy”—classifies those who question the regime on any matter of consequence as a threat to the homeland, and pledges to pursue them accordingly.
Our ruling elites have engaged in an overt war on wrongthink masquerading as a domestic counter-terror mission since at least January 6, 2021.
3 Central Florida men plead guilty in drug trafficking conspiracy
The gang had grenades, suppressors, short barreled rifles; all kinds of ‘restricted’ weaponry. Gun control laws will never affect criminals.
BLUF
By every measure – economic, national security, militarily, culturally and electoral integrity – the Biden administration has been a disaster of incalculable proportions. All of this has occurred in just two years. Ben Franklin was right when he noted that the Founders created “a republic, if you can keep it,” and Reagan’s warning that “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
One of the most important things Trump accomplished was that the left, so deranged by hatred of the man, revealed who they really are: Ideological totalitarians who actually embrace communism of the Chinese variety.
They have to be stopped.
The terrible, horrible, no-good consequences of stolen elections and government corruption
Elon Musk was true to his word, as far as we know, with regard to his promise to release Twitter documents, first by Matt Taibbi and then by Bari Weiss.
Thus far, he has exposed that social media site’s calculated censorship of any and all information that might silence conservative voices, including President Trump’s, as well as information that reflects badly on the Biden family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, lockdowns, and vaccines.
He has done exactly that, probably not to the fullest extent, but he’s released enough to prove how much Twitter, the mainstream media, and all the other social media sites interfered with the 2020 election.
Their interference amounts to both fraud and treason. The Democrats engineered the Biden victory and subsequently bragged about it.
Twitter’s big part of the game has finally been revealed for all to see. Twitter, on their own or often due to orders from the Biden White House and/or the FBI, de-platformed anyone who posted anything remotely critical of the Biden regime and/or its horrific policies, especially those related to COVID lockdowns and vaccines.
The left cheats; they can’t win if they don’t cheat, so they regularly cheat. Nothing makes that clearer than the 2022 midterm elections in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Polls show that about sixty percent of the American people believe the 2020 election was stolen; those people are not all Republicans.
Chances are that in their heart of hearts, ninety percent of Americans know it was stolen.
Just to clarify.
This requirement isn’t for concealed carry. It’s to simply BUY a firearm.
I think this monstrosity isn’t going to make it through the court system, but it does illuminate just how mindless a lot of people are, which isn’t a new thing, as the Framers recognized the malady even back then when they demanded a Bill of Rights.
Measure 114’s live fire training component leaves trainers in limbo
While Oregon’s new voter-approved gun control measure is getting worked out in the courts, there remains uncertainty among local gun shops and firearms instructors in Central Oregon.
Sharon Preston, owner of Ladies of Lead in Redmond — and an instructor who specializes in self-defense training for women — says there are a lot of questions that still have not been answered about the implementation of Measure 114.
Preston says business has been through the roof. But she says she’s had to stop firearm sales, not knowing what is next with the measure. But she says selling guns is only part of what she does.
“Selling guns is a very small portion of my business. I do it as an added value to my clients, so it’s educational based gun sales. But my main focus is always going to be in training,” said Preston.
She’s been forced to find alternatives as 114 is in limbo.
“I’ve heard too many stories in this store from women, locally. The brutality and violence they have been through, survived through. They want a tool that will allow them to live their lives large again, and they’re not going to be able to get on. That’s why I’m switching to crossbows, pepper ball guns, tasers, knives,” Preston said.
Preston’s biggest concern with the measure lies in the required live fire training — meant to prove shooting proficiency. As of now, she says no guidelines have been spelled out as to how the state will facilitate the training courses. And no one knows who will be authorized by the state to lead those courses.
And there are other unanswered questions.
“They don’t know how many rounds we have to shoot, at what distance we have to shoot, at what target we have to shoot. They don’t know what firearm we can use. So there’s so many questions out there,” said Preston.
The next hearing on Measure 114 will be held Tuesday at Circuit Court in Harney County. Those who support the measure will be able to argue against the temporary hold set in place by Judge Robert Raschio.
NBC had a bombshell report that Russia offered America Brittney Griner OR Paul Whelan, citing a senior government official. It would be Biden's choice which one to save.
The report was later edited without explanation to mirror Biden's explanation that only Griner was offered. pic.twitter.com/5BvGeyP0RU
— David Hookstead (@dhookstead) December 9, 2022
original:
Reworked to fit the narrative:
A black market arms dealer, for a basketball player, (instead of a former Marine) that, if it wasn’t for this, would be just another unknown.
Just name five (5) professional women’s basketball players…. Can’t, can ya?
(neither can)
Lord of War about to get a bunch of new viewers. The end scene is literally what just happened in reality. pic.twitter.com/VtuPyUzSWd
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) December 8, 2022
This … kiddies … is what a coup looks like.
That … kiddies … is how a nation of laws responds to real coups.
Take notes if needed. Update your lexicon as required. https://t.co/6SQYmbu1wh
— cdrsalamander (@cdrsalamander) December 7, 2022
BREAKING:
The far-left President of Peru, Pedro Castillo, has staged a state coup.
He announced he has dissolved the Congress & the judiciary & will rule by decree instead.
A state of emergency & curfew has been introduced.
He was about to be impeached pic.twitter.com/m0Iwfbs1qD
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 7, 2022
BLUF
The larger objective of U.S. involvement in social media has always been monitoring and surveillance of the public conversation, and then ultimately controlling and influencing public opinion.
It’s All Making Sense – Elon Musk Has No Idea What He Purchased with Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop…
… And if he does, the outlook is worse.
According to both the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI), via Chairman Mark Warner, and the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) via Mike Turner, the Chinese social media platform TikTok represents a “national security risk” to the United States. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, soon to be the vice-presidential candidate for the DeSantis-Noem 2024 ticket, has also called TikTok a national security threat and banned it in the state. Now, think about that carefully.
What is it about a social media app that allows short video sharing that would constitute a national security risk? The answer is not about dog and cat videos, or dancing diatribes or funny, weird or goofy content; nor is the national security risk attached to any data of the app users or content providers. The national security risk is found in the ability to influence public opinion that is not under the control of the United States government, or more specifically the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS).
The need for control is a reaction to fear. TikTok, as a social media platform, is not considered a national security threat because the Chinese government can control it. TikTok is considered a national security threat because the United States government does not control it.
A few years ago, one of my closest friends went on a mission trip to Honduras with one of the missions our church supports there. He fell in love with a young woman who was helping the mission with their work, and he wound up making several trips back to spend time with her. (Talk about a long-distance relationship!)
Eventually, they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. She began the process of getting her visa to come to the U.S. They married in November 2019, and she continued the legal process to acquire her green card.
That process got ever more complicated during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it took her months longer than it normally would have because of lockdowns and the complications that the virus brought us.
I know she’s not alone, but at the same time, illegal immigrants are pouring across our southern border to the tune of tens of thousands a month. The month my friends got married, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency processed 51,857 encounters with illegal immigrants.
It’s no secret that our border is in crisis. Just read any of the reports from my Townhall colleague Julio Rosas if you don’t believe it. Federal inaction at every level has only exacerbated the problem. So when we hear of a good faith effort, especially a bipartisan one, it gets our attention.
Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are putting forth a bill in the lame-duck session of this Congress that’s simply bad. Over at Townhall, my colleague Matt Vespa explains just two of the major components of this bill:
“There is no funding to complete the border wall—that would make sense,” Matt writes. That’s bad enough, but another proposal in the bill creates a potential ripple effect that could become disastrous.
Matt writes that this bill “will permit some two million recipients of Obama’s unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to get on the citizenship track. The buried portion of this provision is that once these two million are through the process, they can sponsor extended family members so that two million-figure could be closer to seven million, and I’m being conservative in that estimate.”
Blanket forgiveness for two million people who arrived in this country illegally when they were children with a ripple effect that could more than triple that number? How can anyone from either party think that’s a good idea?
In a conversation, my PJ Media colleague Athena Thorne made a perceptive analogy.
She said this type of amnesty bill is akin to “If some squatters bring a kid into the house they’re squatting in and the kid gets comfortable, the kid gets to keep the house!” With that ripple effect, the whole family could get to make their home in a house they don’t have any rights to.
There’s a little bit of a trade-off, as the Washington Post reports: “It gives Republicans faster removal from the country of migrants who fail to qualify for asylum, a continued restriction on applications for the next year, and more border security.”
That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t make up for the millions of illegal immigrants who will suddenly become legal. This will allow millions of people who broke the law to jump the line ahead of those who have waited out the legal immigration process. These people already cut in line once when they made their way across the border — and they’ll get to bypass the process again? That’s not right.
One of the characteristics of this nation that people like to brag about is that we’re a “nation of immigrants.” That’s a nice thing to be proud of, but we’re also a nation of laws. We need to honor those laws, too. If an immigrant wants to become part of this “nation of immigrants,” he or she should abide by our laws, and that starts with coming to this country legally.
An immigration policy starts with enforcing the immigration laws that are already on the books before we try to enact more. A bill like the one Tillis and Sinema are proposing is worse than no immigration reform at all. We can only hope that it won’t get enough traction to pass.
Biden admin disbands ‘fake’ parents council after pushback from parental rights groups
WASHINGTON (CITC) — The Biden administration is disbanding its newly formed national parents council after several advocacy groups accused it of violating federal law.
The National Parents and Families Engagement Council was formed in June as a way to “facilitate strong and effective relationships between schools and parents, families and caregivers.” Representatives were handpicked by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to help the agency engage with communities at the local level.
Less than a month later, the Biden administration was hit with a lawsuit by parental rights groups claiming the council was ideologically divisive. Plaintiffs Parents Defending Education (PDE), America First Legal (AFL) and Fight for Schools and Families (FFS) noted that members of the council included those who stood by a National Schools Boards Association (NSBA) letter that likened concerned parents at school board meetings to “domestic terrorists.”
The lawsuit also argued the council failed to meet other various federal requirements, including open and transparent public meetings and public oversight.
The DOE appeared to concede Monday, as it announced that while it “disagrees” with the notion that it violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), it will no longer move forward with the council.
“Parental rights and voices matter,” the announcement reads. “That’s a clear and consistent message we hear from education stakeholders throughout our nation, whether they’re parents themselves, students or educators, or partners in government or the private sector.”
The DOE added that it strives to hear from “as many parents as possible” and that it recognizes the concern shared by all for the future of American students, regardless of political, social and cultural backgrounds.
The three groups behind the lawsuit have quickly taken to social media to celebrate the victory.
“Parents should NEVER be used as political props to advance radical policies that harm students,” PDE founder and president Nicole Neily, who calls the outcome a “huge win,” reacted on Twitter.
We Now Have the Full Transcript of Fauci’s Deposition in Social-Media Collusion Case
In a Twitter thread, Schmitt noted that know-nothing Fauci blurted out, “I don’t recall,” 174 times during the deposition, “including when asked about emails that he sent, interviews that he gave, and other important information.”
Fauci did, however, “vaguely recall” telling former HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell in early 2020 not to wear a mask when traveling. “Just a couple months later, he was advocating for universal mask mandates,” Schmitt noted.
Also from Schmitt: “One of Fauci’s deputies joined a WHO delegation to China in February of 2020, and in talking to Fauci afterwards, was impressed with how the Chinese ‘were handling the isolation, the contact tracing, the building of facilities to take care of people.’”
Indeed, Fauci admitted that this American official told him the U.S. “may have to go to as extreme a degree of social distancing to help bring our outbreak under control.” But then Fauci clammed up and said he “didn’t recall” the individual discussing this with him when he returned home.”
This is a breaking story. We’ll have more details to report in an upcoming article.
Full Redacted Fauci Transcript by PJ Media on Scribd
OFF v. Brown (D. OR): Oregon agrees to the postponement of its gun permit requirement, saying that “it has become clear that the police chiefs and sheriffs (who serve as the sole permitting agents under Measure 114) will not be prepared to issue permits on December 8.”
Two days after telling a federal judge that Oregonians will be able to apply for a permit to buy a gun by the end of this week, Oregon’s attorney general Sunday night acknowledged the state isn’t ready to have a permitting process in place as required by the voter-approved gun control Measure 114.
In a three-page letter to the court filed at 9:14 p.m. Sunday, Senior Assistant Attorney General Brian Simmonds Marshall conceded that local law enforcement agencies have made it clear that “necessary pieces of the permit to purchase system will not be in place” by this coming Thursday, the date the measure is set to take effect.
The attorney general’s concession echoes what gun rights advocates have argued for the past several weeks and have informed U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut in multiple legal briefs filed in pending lawsuits.
The attorney general has recommended the permit requirement be postponed until February while the measure’s other regulations are allowed to go into effect.
“The State’s position that Measure 114 is constitutional on its face remains the same,” Marshall’s letter said.
The voter-approved measure, which narrowly passed with 50.7% of the vote, will ban the sale, transfer and manufacture of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds; require a permit to purchase a gun; and not allow a gun sale or transfer to occur without a background check completed.
The attorney general’s office admitted in its letter to the court that the firearms safety courses that are required before someone can obtain a permit to buy a gun are not yet available.
Oregonians should be allowed to continue to buy guns without a permit during a ‘‘limited window,’’ until the state has a full permitting process in place, the attorney general’s letter recommends. Meanwhile, the state will continue to work to get a process up and running, Marshall wrote.
“The State’s proposed postponement would mean that, while the permitting system is brought online, Oregonians who lack a permit will be able to purchase and transfer firearms. Meanwhile, the State and local law enforcement would continue to work towards implementing Measure 114′s permit provisions. Moreover, Oregonians would be able to begin the application process. When the Court’s order expires, Measure 114′s permit requirement for purchases would go into effect,” Marshall wrote to the judge.
The attorney general’s office pointed to the court declaration by Jason Myers, a retired Marion County sheriff who is now executive director of the Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association. Myers estimated it will take at least another month to prepare an operational permit system.
In a press release, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum recommended the permit to buy a gun requirement be postponed until February.
“Postponing the permit requirement by approximately two months should give Oregon law enforcement time to have a fully functional permitting system in place. If Judge Immergut agrees to the postponement, then starting in February anyone who purchases a gun in Oregon will be required to have a permit,” Rosenblum said in the release.
Marshall wrote to the court that the state is “committed to working cooperatively with its partners in local law enforcement.”
For the measure to achieve its goal of enhancing public safety, “it is critical that local law enforcement has adequate time to effectively implement the Measure,” Marshall’s letter said.
Under the measure, anyone applying for a permit to buy a gun must complete a training course that includes instruction on state and federal laws related to purchase, ownership, transfer, use and transportation of guns; safe storage of guns including reporting of lost and stolen firearms; how to prevent the abuse or misuse of firearms, including the impact of homicide and suicide on families, communities and the country; and a demonstration that the applicant knows how to lock, load, unload, fire and store a firearm before an instructor certified by a law enforcement agency.
Myers had informed the judge in writing that the sheriffs’ association was unaware of any firearms safety course in Oregon that currently covers all the training requirements.
Immergut held a two-hour hearing Friday morning on the Oregon Firearms Federation’s motion for a temporary restraining order to block the regulations from going into effect as its lawsuit proceeds, contending the measure impinges on their Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Most of the argument Friday, though, focused on the provision banning magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
When Immergut asked Marshall during the hearing if the regulations will be ready to take effect on Thursday, he pledged that Oregonians will be able to apply for a permit then. State police later in the day issued a news release, saying a permit application would be on the agency’s website on Thursday.
Other suits filed challenging the gun control measure included declarations from the sheriffs’ associations and the Oregon Association Chiefs of Police. They argued that their agencies are unprepared and not staffed or funded to support a permitting program for prospective buyers.
Immergut had said at the end of last week that she would rule by Tuesday on whether to grant a temporary restraining order that would put the voter-approved measure on hold.
The judge has given parties to the pending four federal lawsuits until noon Monday to submit any friend of court briefs in support or against the pending motions for a temporary restraining order.
The Rev. Mark Knutson, one of the chief petitioners behind Measure 114, said Sunday night that the Lift Every Voice Oregon interfaith group that obtained signatures to put the measure to voters “wants the most equitable and just process possible…We want this done right to save lives.”
Kevin Starrett, executive director of the Oregon Firearms Federation, said he’s concerned about the tens of thousands of prospective gun buyers currently waiting to have their background checks completed by state police. “They are not going to clear that backlog quickly,” he said by email.
Since Election Day, gun sales in the state have spiked. As of Friday, state police had 41,160 background checks pending for gun purchases or transfers, Capt. Kyle Kennedy said. On Black Friday, the state police received 6,055 new background check requests, the highest amount since Election Day, he said.
— Maxine Bernstein