With less than a week before Oregon enacts the most restrictive gun measure in the nation, a second legal challenge has been filed in federal court. Meanwhile, firearm sales continue to set records in the state.
Passed with just 50.7 percent of the vote, Ballot Measure 114 requires Oregonians to undergo a background check and take a class, which does not yet exist, to obtain a firearm permit. It also bans magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
The measure is set to take effect on Dec. 8, essentially halting legal gun sales in the state.
The first legal challenge to the measure was filed in federal court on Nov. 20 by the Oregon Firearms Federation, the Sherman County Sheriff’s Office, and Adam Johnson the owner of Coat of Arms Custom Firearms in Keizer.
That suit is scheduled for oral arguments in the U.S. District Court in Portland on Dec. 2.
On Nov. 30, the Washington-based Second Amendment Foundation (SAF)—joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition, two federally licensed firearms dealers, and one private gun owner—filed a separate lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Portland.
Both complaints focus on the magazine ban, list Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and state Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum as defendants, and seek to prevent the measure from taking effect while a judge weighs its constitutional merit.
The SAF suit also focused on the magazine ban.
“As we immediately explain in our lawsuit, the State of Oregon has criminalized one of the most common and important means by which its citizens can exercise their fundamental right of self-defense,” wrote SAF executive director Adam Kraut on the foundation website.
“By banning … standard-capacity magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds, the state has barred law-abiding, peaceable residents from legally acquiring or possessing common ammunition magazines and deprived them of an effective means of self-defense,” he continued.
“A regulation eliminating a person’s ability to obtain or use ammunition could make it impossible to use firearms,” plaintiff’s attorney James Buchal wrote in the complaint obtained by The Epoch Times.
He argued that the constitutionally protected right to bear arms “must include the right to own magazines,” since “without bullets the right to bear arms would be meaningless.”
As noted in SAF’s complaint, the magazines banned under the language of Measure 114 are commonly-owned across the United States.
According to the 2021 National Firearms Survey, an estimated 48 percent of American gun owners have owned magazines that hold more than 10 cartridges.
“Maybe the most frustrating thing about the Oregon measure is that officials there are willing to enforce the law’s provisions despite any real prospect this law is going to reduce violent crime,” added SAF founder and executive vice president Alan Gottlieb.
“The only people actually impacted are law-abiding citizens who don’t commit crimes, and who will be left more vulnerable to attack because of this new law,” he continued.
Because the provisions of Measure 114 are scheduled to take effect on Dec. 8, Kraut noted, “we are asking the court for a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief.”
Meanwhile, uncertainty about the measure continues to drive gun sales in the state.
“We’re busier than we were during the Covid lockdowns and the George Floyd protests and riots in Portland,” a clerk at Armac Tactical in Junction City told The Epoch Times.
To accommodate customers who had been standing in line for two hours this week, the small firearm dealer began scheduling appointments for its customers to shop to complete a background check application.
“I think the measure was misleading,” he said. “I mean, it sounds good to say ‘we’ll require background checks.’ But we already do that.”
“All this measure has done is increase our sales.”
Before voters narrowly approved the measure on Nov. 8, the Oregon State Police reported an average of 849 background checks per day. By Nov. 30, the average had quadrupled to 4,092 and more than 29,000 applicants were waiting for approval.