When Representative Mark Owens(R-Crane) was asked in a townhall if there would be any gun bills this session, he responded, "they would not get a hearing. The presiding officers made that commitment." The Democrat leaders, Senate President Rob Wagner (D-Lake Oswego) and Speaker Dan Rayfield (D-Corvallis) must have forgotten and scheduled their sponsored bill a hearing for SB 1503 on February 7, and have scheduled a work session for February 13 at 1PM.

SB 1503 establishes The Task Force on Gun Violence and Suicide Prevention, which “shall study the following issues related to public health best practices for reducing deaths from gun violence and for suicide prevention.” Will this task force do anything, or study in perpetuity? We know the answer.

According to some, there is no such thing as a violent gun. There are violent people, and if you only look into violence where people use one implement vs another you would be looking at only one tiny piece of the problem and will be sure to fail to find any solution. So this bill aims to set up an infrastructure sure to fail and sure to be a black hole for taxpayer funds.

Who will serve on the task force? Legislators, ‘representatives’ of various health organizations, behavioral health providers, and medical providers. Amendment -3, introduced by Wagner and sure to be adopted in the work session, adds law enforcement, professional in veterans' mental health, and a person that lived experience with community safety threats or suicidal ideation. What was their intent to not include law enforcement who deal with violent people every day.

Amendment -3 also changes Section 2 and appropriates $400,000 to the Department of Justice "for the purpose of paying a third party for research ordered by the Task Force on Gun Violence and Suicide Prevention.” It was changed from the Oregon Health Authority. The task force directives are focused on aspects of suicide with only one directive on the use of firearms: "(g) Rates of success for extreme risk protection orders and barriers to implementation and capacity for police stations or other entities to implement voluntary surrender or holding of firearms." Amendment -3 removes the remainder objectives focused on firearms, so why is "Gun Violence" still in the title?

New CDC data reported by ktvz, doesn't support this bill. It shows a three-year decline in youth suicides (24 and younger) in Oregon, with fewer total deaths and a lower rate in 2019, 2020, and 2021. It shows 53% of that declining number is by firearms. Oregon saw a 14% drop in suicides among people ages 24 and younger compared to the year prior, with 102 deaths in 2020. If the drug addicted were removed, the numbers would go way down, which points back to Measure 110.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Senator Wagner's proposed Amendment -3 can be assumed to get ahead of the criticism over their commitment not to hear gun bills and the bad press Oregon Health Authority is receiving. OHA failed in its role as provider of information to the volunteer Oversight and Accountability Council, which awards more than $100 million annually in cannabis tax revenue to recovery organizations, supposedly with guidance from OHA. But the report OHA promised to provide by September 2023 still hasn’t been produced.

What's left of SB 1503 seems to be duplicating the Oregon Suicide Prevention website, AFSP Oregon, and the crisis lines resources along with a number of other programs that testified in the hearing. There is no lack of help available, which goes back to the intent of this bill. Whether amended or not, guns will be the main topic of discussion.


--Bill Dewey

Post Date: 2024-02-07 12:42:26

Last Update: 2024-02-07 18:03:43