Gun activists disagree with Gov. Brown's gun safety agenda
More than 100 gun activists and locals gathered Saturday on the steps of the Oregon Capitol to protest Gov. Kate Brown's positions on gun safety.
Armed with AK-47 semi-automatic rifles and conceal carry handguns, many said they considered the governor's recent gun-related executive order and proposed gun safety plan to be a violation of Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms.
Last Friday, Brown announced her plan, Oregonians United to End Gun Violence, to address gun safety in Oregon and nationwide. The proposal followed a series of mass shootings that have received national attention this summer, including the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, and police officer shooting in Dallas, Texas.
During her announcement, Brown issued an executive order giving Oregon State Police and local authorities more tools to track and analyze gun transactions. She also outlined her priorities for the year, including three gun safety measures she hoped to work on during the 2017 Oregon Legislative session, and a call to Congress to pass national firearms safety legislation.
The Saturday event protesting the governor's stances was organized by the original intent Constitution group Oregon III% (they pronounce it 'three percent'), and a Brown-specific protest group, Step Down Kate Brown.
Protest centers around loophole closure proposals
U.S. Senate Republican primary nominee Mark Callahan, running against incumbent Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., was one of the keynote speakers.
Callahan said he thought the issues Brown raised on gun rights should be focused on dealing with the people possessing the weapons, not the guns themselves.
However, he stated he was opposed to Brown's proposals to close the "Charleston Loophole," which currently allows gun shops to provide applicants with guns if the Oregon State Police are not able to process a background check within three days. He also said he was against Brown's proposal to close the "Boyfriend loophole," restricting access of weapons by expanding the types of relationships that qualify under domestic abuse charges.
"We have people like corrupt Kate Brown, left-wing liberal nut jobs in the marble nuthouse behind us, that are taking away our gun rights, that are trying to take away our freedoms," Callahan said during his speech on Saturday. "We need to fight back, and we need to fight back now."
Callahan received an endorsement from the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund in 2012, when he was running for state representative. Callahan did not win that seat, but he said Saturday that he recently met with NRA leaders, who are in the process of considering him for an endorsement for his 2016 Senate race.
Some of Callahan's views were shared by attendee Michael Viles of McMinnville, with III% Oregon, who said he was also opposed to Brown's proposal to close the three-day background check loophole.
Viles was arrested in his late teens for smoking marijuana, and he said because his juvenile probation records weren't expunged from his gun ownership eligibility record, years later when he attempted to buy a shotgun from R&T Firearms in McMinnville, his application was not processed by OSP within the three-day period.
Viles said the gun shop owner refused to sell him the weapon because of the liability, and he was forced to reach out to the state to update his records.
"I hear that's the case all over Oregon," Viles said. "I feel it's a waste of time to even say it's a loophole."
National issues at the forefront
While the event responded to fairly recent proposals from Oregon's governor, attendees also expressed concerns about a number of national gun-related issues.
The Saturday event promoted itself on social media with the hashtag #AllLivesMatter.
All Lives Matter, a phrase coined in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, has received recent backlash after shootings this July of two black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, again brought the Black Lives Matter movement to the national forefront.
Among the protesters gathered on the capitol steps were also several who had witnessed the aftermath of gun-related shootings during the past year, in Oregon.
"Restricting something won't help anything," said Nick Ayers, a Roseburg resident who recently served in the Oregon National Guard.
Ayers said several of his friends protested President Obama's visit to Roseburg in October, in the wake of the Umpqua Community College shooting. The president, who met with a number of the victims and their families, was met with hundreds of protesters during his visit, many of whom argued the president was trying to gain support for new gun restrictions.
Response to event
While the protest against the governor at the state capitol was largely peaceful, the array of assault weapons and handguns drew concerns from several passersby, who engaged in discussion with several of the attendees on the outskirts of the crowd.
The event was joined by a Salem Police Department patrol car.
Toward the end of the speeches, event organizer Dory Dae encouraged the crowd to grab chalk from a bucket and write messages of protest to Brown and the state legislature on the pavement. Dae is founder of Step Down Kate Brown.
Several of the protesters wrote messages on the ground calling out the shooting of LaVoy Finicum, one of the occupiers in the 2016 Malheur National Wildlife Refuge takeover, as unjust.
Dae announced the group already had planned another protest in Portland during September, by the name of "All Lives Matter Against Injustice."
"Take all the names away, we are all the people," Dae said.
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