So much stuff that I couldn’t blog them separately.
First up (because it is the most important): Jerry the Geek is sending up flares over Oregon Senate Bill 1012, and you should run, not walk to read his post on it.
The Oregon Senate is considering a new bill (SB 1012) which will regulate the way in which shooting ranges are organized, administered and regulated.
(Pay special attention to that last word — ‘regulated’. It’s not in the bill as a word, but it’s all over the intent of the bill.)
Not only does it load up all public and private ranges with huge new costs (professional Rangemasters on duty at all times) and make each range subject to the whims of the local police force, with the Rangemasters needign their approval, as well as the facility itself, but it has a firearms registration scheme built into it:
All firearms or other weapons that are brought onto the premises are recorded in a log book. The rangemaster shall cause to be recorded at least the following information:
The make and model of the weapon;
The caliber of the weapon;
The name and address of the person bringing the weapon onto the premises; and
The date and time that the weapon is brought onto the premises.
And last but not least, the proposed law contains the always disturbing “Noise Pollution” section.
If you Oregon guys don’t attend any scheduled hearings on this, then you just don’t care enough about your range time.
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Next up, and also on the legislative front, Mr.C informs us that the Anti-Gun Show bill here in Washington (SB-5197) never made it out of the Rules Committee before the cut-off deadline and has therefore qualified to be pulled off of life support.
…any bill that dies in committee can be brought to the Senate floor by a vote of the Senate. Our (not really the) Governor and her people are pushing really hard to get this bill passed. The more conservative Democrats who come from the more rural areas of the state don’t want to vote for this bill against the wishes of their constituents, but they don’t want to go against the Gov either. The best of both worlds for them would be for the bill to not get out of committee, which is how it now stands.
I’m hoping that it keels over and dies in the upcoming weeks.
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Staying at Mr. C’s place, both he and KeeWee have pictures of the first ever rimfire Falling Plate match.
As soon as work cools down (and I buy the 5-hour battery for my camera) , I’ll be heading up to the CWSA range to show you exactly why I call these competitions “The CWSA Drag Races”. Full-Auto may be faster, but not by much.
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And finally, Admiral Ahab will be taking in a boar hunt this June and was attempting to explain this to a co-worker. It went well enough, I suppose, though I sure wish he would have mentioned the “with a spear” part of it.
Thanks for the mention! Let’s hope SB5197 isn’t brought back up, although if it was, and the rural D’s broke party ranks and voted against the bill, and with the wishes of their constituents, that would create a big rift in their party, which might be a good thing, as long as the bill fails. If it doesn’t fail, we’re in BIG trouble at gun shows.
Rimfire hanging plates match at CWSA next Sunday. You’d enjoy that type of match. Lots slower and not head to head, so a lot more relaxing to shoot, compared to pins or falling plates.
…… Mr. C.
Phil,
Thanks for linking to this article.
Sure, it’s a purely “Oregon” bill … this week.
But as Mr. Completely says, if it flies in Oregon, the next step is Washington. You folks have enough trouble with your own goofy legislators trying to slip ugly laws onto the books. You don’t need for them to be encouraged by OUR goofy legislators (read: Ginny Burdick)
You have a lot of faithful readers in Oregon. Thanks for letting them know that they’re not the only ones who recognize this kind of sneaky political activism.
Jerry, thanks for putting together the article on SB 1012. I followed it with mine, of much less consequence, but what we need to do is put together a gunblogger’s working group to defeat this. Being retired, I wouldn’t mind doing the Communications Command position. It would be good practice for any possible later duties in a well-regulated militia.
May I propose a face-to-face meeting soon? Perhaps you could get some other names to flesh out a staff.
Now, a tiny complaint. The word “activist” is from the dumbed-down school of journalism. Please discontinue using it. Use properly-discriptive words instead.
In the case of anything written by Senator Ginny Burdick on the subject of firearms, how about the phrase “oath-of-office-violating, treasonous position against the US Constitution”. Doesn’t roll of the tongue like “activism”, but it gets the job done, in a sledgehammer sort of way.