More Fallout From Oregon Gun Bill Hearing

On the heels of the Oregon state senate judiciary committee hearing on the proposed gun control bill regarding background checks, it appears as though the Oregon State Police are already violating state law, just as gun owners have feared.

At the hearing, one Tricia Witfield of the “Information Services Division” of the OSP cited some statistics on the number of background checks conducted in the state, and number of denials, which totaled 2151 in 2013. This alone is in direct violation of ORS 166.436, Section 5, subsection B, which clearly states that “The record of the information obtained during a request for a criminal background check under this section is exempt from disclosure under public records law.”

But it gets worse. A new group has emerged that appears to be quite friendly with the Ceasefire and Prozanski crowd. Gun Owners For Responsible Gun Ownership, which is complicit in promoting the “universal background check” bill, seems to have exclusive information that only could have come from the Oregon State Police background check database. Here’s a screenshot of their opening page on their website, where they go deeper into the statistics of the people who have been denied a transfer of a firearm. They claim that 263 sales to fugitives from justice were blocked, 80 sales to convicted domestic abusers were blocked, 51 sales to people with restraining orders were blocked, and 750 sales to convicted felons were blocked. We’ll assume that the “fugitives” and “domestic abusers” are part of the “convicted felons” number, so add in the 51 who have restraining orders against them, and we have a total of 801 people who were denied their firearms transfer due to criminal record.

So 2151 denials, minus 801 criminals, equals 1350 denials still left to be accounted for.

At the hearing, Miss Penny Okamoto of Ceasefire Oregon stated that only 5% of people who shot someone else were considered “mentally ill”. We can reasonably deduct 5% from the total number of denials, which comes to 108.

1350 minus 108 is 1242 denials that are UNACCOUNTED FOR. That’s 58% of all background checks in 2013. These are 1242 background checks that were denied for reasons other than having a criminal record or being mentally ill. Why were they denied?

Oregon Alliance To Prevent Gun Violence was also privy to similar data sets from the information that is supposedly unavailable to the public. One of their pictures says that in 2012, background checks stopped the sale of 2378 guns to individuals with criminal records. First of all, that is technically impossible to surmise, as one can purchase multiple firearms at the same time with just 1 background check, but it’s reasonable to assume they meant that there were 2378 denials. Another picture also repeats some of the same numbers from Gun Owners For Responsible Gun Ownership. Again, how is this information getting out?

There are 2 primary explanations for this. Either the Oregon State Police are violating more laws by leaking demographic information to special interest groups, which is very likely, considering they are already on record by making public some of the broad background check numbers, or those groups are just making up the numbers out of thin air.

This is just one of the many examples of certain people within the justice system looking the other way when violating laws suit their agenda, which is exactly what gun owners have been saying, fearing, and experiencing, and provides justification for all of the worries that gun owners have about the security of data and ethics of people within government, bureaus, and so called “gun safety” advocacy groups.

For more on the fallout from the Oregon state senate judiciary committee hearing, please visit www.youtube.com/laughingatliberals

 

Published on Feb 9, 2014 by LaughingAtLiberals