Gun owners divided on expanded background checks

Criminal background checks for gun sales are a sensible step toward preventing dangerous, violent or unstable people from buying deadly weapons.

Criminal background checks for gun sales are a violation of the Second Amendment and are offensive to citizens' rights.

Which statement is true depends on who's talking. People who testified inside the Oregon State Capitol regarding Senate Bill 941 Wednesday morning fell into one of those two camps, and where they fell appeared to be a highly personal matter.

Gun owners were split on the issue. Law enforcement leaders were divided. Gun store owners did not agree. Men fell onto different sides, and so did women.

The bill would require background checks on all private gun sales, including those made over the Internet via sites such as Armslist.com. Exceptions would be made for sales or exchanges between family members and in some other circumstances.

The issue has come up previously in the Oregon Legislature. A very similar bill was hotly debated in 2014, but it never made it to the Senate floor for a vote. Then, as now, it was introduced by Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene.

Prozanski said Wednesday that he owns guns and agrees with the National Rifle Association that "guns don't kill people. People kill people." However, he said if that's the case, society should ensure dangerous people don't have guns.

This is the only gun bill Prozanski will introduce during the 2015 session, he said.

It is not, however, the only gun control bill to come out of the Oregon Senate this year. Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward and Sen. Barbara Smith Warner, both Portland Democrats, introduced on Wednesday a bill that would allow police to charge parents with a crime if their children get their hands on a gun they are not supposed to have.

Senate Bill 945 would make it a crime to possess a gun in one's home and leave it in a place where a child can get to it, in the event the child does obtain the gun. (In other words, it would not be a crime to have a gun laying out on shelf or in a closet if a child never touched it.)

That bill has not yet been assigned to a committee, but it would be the next piece of the conversation that began Wednesday morning with SB 941.

Opponents of the background check expansion said it would be an onerous burden on responsible gun owners and would be virtually unenforceable. Many said it went too far in restricting gun owners' rights.

Grant County Sheriff Glen Palmer said the very idea of it was "borderline treasonous" and violated the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which provides the right to bear arms not be "infringed."

"I have no intention of enforcing that law," he said.

Palmer is not alone. Counties from across Oregon submitted resolutions declaring their support of the Second Amendment and warning that they would not enforce any laws they consider infringements on that right.

Not all law enforcement officials agreed, however.

Former Portland Police Chief Mike Reese and Lake Oswego Police Chief Don Thompson both testified in favor of the bill, which they said only made sense in working to keep guns away from people who would misuse them.

Gang violence and shootings are a real problem in Portland, Reese said, and it is only responsible to take every possible step of prevention.

Thompson agreed. He previously ran police departments in California, and he said similar laws there had a noticeable impact on gun violence. Background checks can't eliminate it, but they do help, Thompson said.

Oregon State Police data shows that there are about 19,000 gun transactions every month in Oregon, Prozanski said, and about 1 percent (190) are rejected because the buyer can't pass a background check.

The most common reasons are having a felony record or an outstanding restraining order for domestic violence, he said.

Those people should not be able to buy guns anywhere, he said, no matter the circumstances.

Prohibiting gun sales online would be going too far, Prozanski told the Statesman Journal. That would be a "hardship and burden" for law-abiding people, he said, adding that it is not right to restrict the ability of responsible people to buy guns.

It is not going too far to ensure that felons aren't buying guns, he said.

Many gun owners agreed. They said they would want to be sure they weren't accidentally selling a gun to a violent person, and they would want to be sure everyone was as careful as possible.

Some members of the military and law enforcement communities stressed that safety is their priority in using firearms, and they said it should be everyone's.

Opponents, however, said criminals will always find a way to find guns, and no manner of rules will stop them. It is better to police the actual crimes committed with guns, they said, than to try and prevent them from getting firearms at all.

The hearing was emotional on both sides. The audience often applauded, usually after an SB 941 opponent had testified. One spectator stood up and scolded Prozanski for allowing some testimony to continue too long.

The most emotional testimony came from family members of people killed by guns, a group to which Prozanski has belonged since his sister was murdered when he was a teenager.

One man, Robert Yuille, talked about losing his wife in the 2012 mass shooting at Clackamas Town Center. Cindy Yuille had been out Christmas shopping, and she was shot in the back. The bullet pierced her lung and then her heart, Yuille said.

Background checks won't end violence like that, he said, but it's worth it if even one family is saved from going through something similar.

Yuille spoke to the media after the hearing, and he was visibly shaken by the opponents' claims that the law presented too much of an inconvenience for gun buyers.

"How inconvenient is it to have your wife taken from you in a heartbeat?" he said.

hhoffman@statesmanjournal.com, (503) 399-6719 or follow at twitter.com/HannahKHoffman

Next steps

Senate Bill 941 will have a work session Thursday morning at 8 a.m. in Hearing Room 50. If the committee votes to send it to the Senate floor, there could be a vote as early as next week.

Prozanski said he plans to introduce and support an amendment that would allow people who live more than 40 miles away from each other to be apart when they make a gun sale. People who live closer will have to make the sale in person.