Oregon citizens organize to limit guns after Uvalde massacre. These are your proposals

By Jane C. Timm -

A citizen initiative has been launched in Oregon to raise new gun safety standards and ban high-capacity magazines, after last month's mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, mobilized volunteers and voters.

A group of religious leaders, known as the Lift Every Voice Oregon coalition, is collecting signatures to try to get a measure, Initiative Petition 17, on the November ballot.

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If approved by voters, it would ban high-capacity magazines of more than 10 rounds and require prospective gun buyers to obtain a permit, undergo safety training and pass a background check before purchasing a firearm. .

Although the effort is years in the making -- religious leaders said they began considering a ballot initiative in 2018 after the Parkland, Florida, shooting -- the racist supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10 people, and the massacre of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, supercharged their campaign.

At the beginning of May, the group had 35,000 signatures.

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As of Monday, they had gathered 114,000 signatures, 30,000 in the last week alone, according to organizers.

That's more than the minimum 112,020 signatures from registered voters they need to get the proposition on the Oregon ballot this year, but organizers say they're working to get more than 140,000 by the end of next week.

“People are grieving and sad: what can we do, what can we do?

And they have realized that in Oregon we have real legislation that could be an example to the nation of what ordinary people can do,” said Rev. WJ Mark Knutson, campaign chairman.

"The energy is out of the ordinary," he added.

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Volunteers have turned up in droves: The coalition now has 1,500 active volunteers, up from 450 before the shooting, ranging in age from a 12-year-old student to a 94-year-old recent widower.

In the basement of the Knutson church there used to be a few volunteers packing petition packets for volunteers from around the state.

There are now more than 20 volunteers a day, according to organizers.

Thousands of signatures have come in from people who downloaded and printed the petition at home and signed independently, filling the group's suddenly too small post office box each day.

Penny Okamato, a veteran gun restriction activist with the Lift Every Voice Oregon coalition, called the measure the "most exciting piece of legislation I've ever worked on."

Raevahnna Richardson signs a petition in support of a gun safety ballot measure in Salem, Ore., Tuesday, June 7, 2022. Andrew Selsky/AP

He said the word "momentum" doesn't quite capture what's going on with the petition and that people are "gagging" with fear.

"They know lawmakers aren't going to do anything because they got away with doing nothing after Sandy Hook," he said of Congress.

"They're desperate to get something done, and they're willing to do it themselves."

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To put a question to voters in Oregon, citizens must get the ballot language approved by the attorney general — and the state Supreme Court if there are challenges — and then gather a significant number of signatures in support of it. .

“We saw complete inaction on gun violence prevention laws, the kind of things that would really make a difference,” said Rabbi Michael Cahana, another of the coalition leaders.

"There was a sense of hopelessness, and as religious leaders, we believe in hope."

Lift Every Voice Oregon got text approval for its initiative proposal in November;

You have until July 8 to collect the necessary number of signatures.

Oregon is one of 26 states with a ballot initiative process, and Knutson said he thinks other states will consider taking action because they have to pass safety laws that legislatures have refused to enact.

“It's already been called the 'Oregon model' by like-minded groups across the country,” Knutson said.

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Okamato, executive director of the Oregon firearms safety group, said Oregon already requires background checks, but gun sales are allowed if the background check is not completed after three business days.

This is often called the “Charleston loophole,” a reference to the 2015 racist murders of nine worshipers at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, by a young white shooter who obtained a gun that way.

The specifics of the ballot measure are popular but have been difficult to enact in Oregon, where Democrats control both houses of the Legislature.

The governor is also a Democrat.

“We tried to close the Charleston loophole in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021,” he said, pointing to bills that failed in four different sessions and adding that activists had urged the governor to take executive action twice.

“I myself don't understand why legislation that has such high popularity in the polls is difficult to pass in the Oregon Legislature,” she noted.