{"id":93327,"date":"2023-06-01T16:12:11","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T21:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=93327"},"modified":"2023-06-01T16:12:11","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T21:12:11","slug":"93327","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=93327","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

New Oregon gun law, Measure 114, to face federal court test next week<\/a><\/p>\n

Oregonians passed\u00a0Measure 114<\/a>\u00a0in November. It would ban the manufacture, purchase or sale of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. It would also require people to take a safety course and pass a background check to get a permit allowing them to purchase firearms. But before the law went into effect, it ran into\u00a0a flurry of legal challenges<\/a>\u00a0at the state and federal levels.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0state case<\/a>\u00a0is expected to pick up again in September. And several bills\u00a0meant to tighten Oregon\u2019s gun laws<\/a>\u00a0are among the legislation sidelined by the Republican-led walkout in the Oregon Senate.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the federal bench trial \u2014 no jury \u2014 starts next week in Portland and will be heard by U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee. The federal trial, which is slated to run for five days, will result in a first ruling about whether the new law is legal under the U.S. Constitution. No matter what Immergut decides, the ruling will likely be appealed, possibly all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

A lawyer for one of the groups hoping to overturn the law declined an invitation to come on Think Out Loud this week, citing the pending case. But a lawyer for the state, Michael Kron, did agree to come on the show and spoke to host Dave Miller on Wednesday. Kron is special counsel to the State Attorney General and is part of the legal team defending the voter-passed law.<\/p>\n

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dave Miller:\u00a0<\/b><\/i>Can you remind us more fully what Measure 114 does?<\/i><\/p>\n

Michael Kron:\u00a0<\/b>Of course. I think you actually did cover it pretty well. There are three primary things that the law accomplishes.<\/p>\n

The first is to require permits for people who are purchasing firearms. Those permits are issued by local law enforcement and involve a background check conducted by the state police. They cost a limited amount of money and they require a firearm safety course. And then, if you haven\u2019t heard back from your application [after 30 days], they provide you with the right to go to court to get an answer.<\/p>\n

The second thing Measure 114 does is that it limits the capacity of magazines for firearms. If you have a magazine currently that holds more than 10 rounds, you can keep it. But the ways in which you can use it are limited unless you permanently alter it so that it holds 10 rounds or less.<\/p>\n

And then finally, it closes what is known as the \u201cCharleston loophole.\u201d The Charleston loophole is a [federal] law that allows firearm transactions to proceed without a completed background check if the background check has been requested by the firearm dealer, but has taken more than three days to complete. [Measure 114] requires a completed background check.<\/p>\n

Miller:<\/b><\/i>\u00a0The plaintiffs [in the federal case] raised six different constitutional challenges. The first and longest is that Measure 114\u2032s permitting provisions violate the Second Amendment. And they begin their arguments by pointing to the Supreme Court\u2019s 2022 Bruen case where justices found that a New York State law was unconstitutional. That law required people to show some kind of special need in order to get a license to carry a concealed pistol.<\/i><\/p>\n

What\u2019s your contention in terms of the relevance of this Bruen decision?<\/i><\/p>\n

Kron:\u00a0<\/b>The state\u2019s argument on that point is that the Bruen decision specifically allows for permitting regimes that are \u201cshall issue,\u201d meaning that the person who\u2019s administering the permitting process is required to issue permits to people who meet the qualifications, which are fairly minimal.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a specific footnote in Bruen which identifies several states\u2019 shall issue permitting regimes and says those are acceptable. [The footnote] includes Oregon\u2019s concealed handgun license regime, which has many of the same features that Measure 114 includes.<\/p>\n

Miller:\u00a0<\/b><\/i>Plaintiffs say permit-to-purchase regimes all came in the 20th Century, which is \u201ctoo little and too late to provide insight into the meaning of a much older constitutional provision.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

What precedent are you relying on from other states? And, how do you deal with this question of a precedent that\u2019s too recent?<\/i><\/p>\n

Kron:\u00a0<\/b>Well, the state is making a number of arguments in response to that contention. One is simply that there\u2019s the legal argument that there\u2019s really no textual difference in the Second Amendment between the right to keep arms and the right to bear arms. And nothing in Bruen specifically talks about such a difference either. In terms of facts, we are both pointing to some prior regulation, some early regulations, of firearms, including tax requirements and census requirements so that states could be aware of who owned guns and how many existed. But we\u2019re also pointing out that the Supreme Court in Bruen was very careful to say that its test was not creating a regulatory straitjacket for states.<\/p>\n

The Bruen opinion says that if there are unprecedented societal concerns or extreme technological changes the kinds of regulations that will suffice to show a tradition of regulating arms in this country needs to be looked at as a question of analogies rather than an exact match.<\/p>\n

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