SB 232 VOTE:NO – Died in Committee
Status (overview) of bill:https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2017R1/Measures/Overview/SB232
This bill requires court to ask petitioner at hearing for family or household abuse restraining order whether respondent possesses any firearms and to record answer on order. Directs presiding judge of judicial district to adopt protocols relating to surrender of firearms by persons subject to a court order prohibiting them from possessing firearms, to include whether the court should enter an additional order requiring the person to surrender firearms and methods of tracking compliance.
Personal Choice and Responsibility
Like all gun laws this is well meaning but will have no effect on public safety and will only cause expenditure of government officer effort for no return. There are so many ways this will fail, from the petitioner not knowing whether the respondent has firearms, to not knowing how many or where, making it impossible for authorities to ever know whether they have removed respondent's access to firearms no matter how many hours they expend. Then there is the problem of removal of liberty and property without the ability to face one's accuser in court, violating the right to due process.
Fiscal Responsibility
Any hours or monies expended in this process will be wasted as there is no way to know whether someone's access to any and all firearms has been truly removed.
Limited Government
After this measure fails for a time as it has everywhere it has been tried, the argument will be made that the government cannot make sure it has removed all firearms from the person's ability to access unless it knows where all firearms are which the person could access. That is of course, registration, and not one step down that slippery slope must ever be allowed by a free people.
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