On this day, December 12, 2003 Keiko the Killer Whale and star of the movie
Free Willy, and one-time Oregon resident, died in Taknes Bay, Iceland. Part of his training there included swimming in the ocean outside the bay. Keiko disappeared on one of these excursions. He eventually turned up 870 miles away off the Norwegian coast. Again, he became an attraction as boatloads of sightseers came out to see him. Keiko appeared to enjoy the attention. He accepted food from the visitors and even allowed some to climb on his back, defeating the whole purpose of bringing him from Oregon. Keiko's handlers eventually herded him to Taknes Bay, hoping he might join a passing orca pod. These hopes never materialized. Keiko remained in Taknes Bay as his health deteriorated. On the morning of December 12, 2003, Keiko beached himself. He died of pneumonia.
Also on this day, December 12, 2008, a bomb exploded inside a branch of the West Coast Bank in Woodburn, killing a police officer and a state bomb disposal technician. Police arrested 32-year-old Joshua A. Turnidge, a steelworker, in Salem on December 14. Joshua's father, 57-year-old Bruce Turnidge, was also soon arrested and charged with the bombing. In 2010 Bruce Turnidge and his son were convicted on 18 counts related to the bank bombing.
“Semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a machinegun”
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the bump stock ban on June 14, 2024, in
Garland v. Cargill.
In 2017, Trump directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to enact a ban in reaction to the massacre at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas. Gun rights proponents declared the act an unconstitutional power grab that created thousands of felons out of thin air without legislative support. The use of bump stocks in that horrible crime is highly suspect even after months of investigation.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the opinion for the court, “We hold that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot by a single function of the trigger.
And, even if it could, it would not do so ‘automatically.’ ATF therefore exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns.”
Oregon Firearms Federation (OFF) reports this as the third major pro-rights victory in two days including the court victory against Biden’s
rule to close ‘gun show loophole’ as efforts to entrap any gun owner who transferred a firearm.
OFF praises this victory as common sense. “Given that the dedicated public servants over at ATF have actually determined that a
shoelace is a machine gun this is a tremendous victory for sanity, common sense, and the all too rare notion that words actually mean something. Remember, the bump stock ban did not say bump stocks identified as machine guns. It said they were machine guns.”
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
“The firearms community has long argued over the value of bump stocks and some have expressed the opinion that they are pointless gadgets that serve no useful purpose. Some even felt that their prohibition was no big deal,” OFF disagrees. “ While the only real purpose they may serve is turning money into noise, if bureaucrats, even the President of the United States, can arbitrarily change the meaning of words, nothing is safe. It is a short distance between saying sliding plastic parts are machine guns to saying AR-15’s are machine guns. In fact, we have seen this very issue arise with the just overturned ban on stabilizing braces, the reinvention of what defines a ‘firearm’ for the purpose of mandatory registration.”
The ruling on this case is a good indication of where the Supreme Court is at today. Whether it will remain the same for the case against Oregon’s
SB 554 passed in 2021, remains to be seen. This law levies fines for failure to report a stolen gun with a serial number – you can be held responsible for any crime committed with guns that have been stolen from you, and your liability when you lawfully transfer a firearm is exponentially higher. In addition, under this law, you need to keep any gun you are not carrying locked up and useless, your rights to allow a minor to use one of your firearms are now extremely restricted and complicated by conflicting language, and you may no longer carry a firearm with a concealed handgun license in the Portland Airport Terminal, in the state capitol building and the grounds of any school that chooses to make its property off limits. There remains ongoing debate over contradicting language within the bill and what proponents said it would do.
--Donna Bleiler| Post Date: 2024-06-19 11:56:56 | Last Update: 2024-06-19 23:34:06 |
