On the heels of a strong hint about a new gun control initiative effort in Washington Wednesday, gun prohibitionists in neighboring Oregon are launching a campaign to ban so-called “assault weapons,” according to Willamette Week.
Called the “The Interfaith and People of Goodwill Campaign to Ban Assault Weapons,” the effort is already attracting attention beyond the Pacific Northwest. Anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety has shown a keen interest in passing restrictive gun laws all along the West Coast, and Second Amendment activists will be watching to see whether Everytown money flows into the Beaver State campaign.
The Oregon Firearms Federation reminded gun owners and hunters in that state, “Those of you who remember the ballot measure to ban bear and cougar hunting with dogs, or the ballot measure to outlaw the private sales of firearms at gun shows will recall the shameless lies the anti-gun side told to con ignorant voters into giving up their rights. Millions in out of state money was spent and there was no end to the misleading visuals on wall-to-wall TV ads.
“The extremists promoting this confiscation attempt are hoping to capitalize on the wave of anti-rights protests by school children being orchestrated by Bloomberg funded operatives,” the organization added. “The plan is to make Oregon as much like California as possible. The potential of this ballot measure is impossible to calculate. In states with these kinds of bans, there has been massive noncompliance but a massive loss of freedom.”
Washington lawmakers failed to adopt stricter gun control legislation during the recent session, although they did pass a ban on “bump stocks” that was quickly signed by Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee. He appeared Wednesday evening on a KIRO Town Hall program during which he reminded the audience that he voted to ban “assault weapons” in 1994 while serving in Congress and that he is committed to that. That vote cost Inslee his congressional seat in the Tri-City area of Eastern Washington that fall. He subsequently moved back to a safer district in Western Washington, where he won a congressional seat.
“As you know, ballot measures are largely won in Multnomah County. Rest assured the anti-gun establishment there…will throw its weight behind this effort… Voter turnout is essential. We cannot allow Multnomah County to, once again, rob us of our rights.”—Oregon Firearms Federation
Interestingly, during the KIRO program, the Rev. Sandy Brown, representing the Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility, took a swipe at the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation for being an obstacle to his group’s efforts to pass more restrictive gun laws in Washington State.
“Individual laws that take guns from people who are about to hurt somebody else is the approach that we need to do,” Brown asserted. “We’ve done that consistently, but we are often times confronted with obstacles, such as the Second Amendment Foundation.”
A Pew Research poll conducted last June revealed at the time that overall, 68 percent of Americans support a ban on so-called “assault rifles.” But the breakdown shows 48 percent of gun owners support the ban while 77 percent of non-gun owners favor the prohibition.
