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by NW Spotlight
We’re used to Oregon Democrats having grandiose ideas and being utterly incompetent at implementing those ideas – much to the detriment of taxpayers. Think Columbia River Crossing where $200M was spent [2] and NO BRIDGE WAS EVER BUILT or the complete disaster of the now-scrapped Cover Oregon where $310M was spent [3] and NOT ONE OREGONIAN WAS EVER ABLE TO SIGN UP FOR HEALTH INSURANCE ONLINE.
Now comes SB 941 [4] – the unnecessary bill [5] expanding background checks for almost all private firearms sales. It’s payoff for all the Bloomberg money dumped in Oregon’s 2014 elections [6] and it’s been the obsession of Sen. Ginny Burdick (D) and Sen. Floyd Prozanski (D) for the last several sessions. They claim it will make Oregon safer, and yet when the Legislative Fiscal Office came out with their fiscal impact for the bill this week [7] they are conceding that this proposed law would only result in 1.5 to 3 people going to prison a year!
So they’ve spent all this time and taxpayer money, they’re going to make law-abiding Oregonians spend $400,000 more a biennium just to sell their guns, they’re going to force 20,000 more background checks per year (with the additional inconvenience, record keeping [8] and delays) just to put 1.5 to 3 people in prison per year?
Think about that. Wasn’t this supposed to stop all the criminals and “convicted felons [9]” who are buying guns “over the internet” and from “Craigslist”? Plus, the new law itself will create more criminals if they don’t run a background check on a private gun sale – a “Class A misdemeanor, with subsequent offenses being classified as a Class B felony.” So the Legislature’s own Fiscal Office is saying for all of that, it will only be 1.5 to 3 people a year going to prison? Talk about a feel-good, do-nothing bill!
Is this really the best use of time and taxpayer money to help make Oregon safer?
What’s different this time is we’re getting to see how ineffective they are BEFORE they even start.