Oregon Voters Pass Measure That Creates ‘Database’ of Gun Owners

by Bronson Winslow

 

Oregon voters on Wednesday passed Ballot Measure 114, one of the most restrictive gun control measures in the country.

The ballot measure passed 51% to 49%, with 77% reporting, according to the Oregonian. Though the results were close with just over three-fourths of the vote tallied, the remaining counties of Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas all heavily favor the measure.

Measure 114, often referred to as the Reduction of Gun Violence Act, will require background checks, firearm training, fingerprint collection and a permit to purchase any firearm. Alongside heightened restrictions, the National Rifle Association (NRA) believes the legislation’s ambiguous language fails to safeguard gun owner information by creating a searchable gun owner database.

“The ballot measure gives the power to each permit issuing department to annually publish ‘any additional information that it determines would be helpful’ to the process. That information includes names, addresses, and a whole host of additional personal information that would be released to the public,” NRA spokesperson Lars Dalseide previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “This ballot measure fails to safeguard law-abiding gun owners’ personal information – and, by proxy, information of families, friends, and employers – being made public. Failing to include those safeguards puts lives and property at risk.”

Currently, California maintains a database for owners of concealed carry permits, but the Reduction of Gun Violence Act will place every gun owner on a database, according to the legislation. The contents of the California database was leaked in June, and gun rights advocates have argued that centralized gun databases lead to an abuse of power.

“This measure will not make our community safer. It will put our communities at greater risk for violence because it requires that every sheriff’s office and police agency divert scarce public safety resources to background systems that already exist,” Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson said in a video statement, according to Fox News.

Oregon already requires background checks for gun owners, but the legislation will add a gun safety course regulated by the police and restrict magazine capacity to ten rounds. In total, the new legislation will cost the state approximately $49 million annually, according to Fox News.

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Bronson Winslow is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Person Looking to Buy Gun” by Thayne Tuason. CC BY-SA 4.0.

 

 

 

 


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