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Armed Oregon Citizens Could Face Fines Or Jail Time For Not Registering Firearms Due To “Declared Emergency”

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House Bill 3223 has been introduced in this session of the Oregon Legislation. Section 8 of the bill states that an emergency exists for the preservation of public peace and health and safety. But is there really an emergency in the State of Oregon because of firearms? The statistics tell a different story! Here is what you are not being told about this bill.


According to the people behind HB 3223 there is a declared emergency because of people in Oregon having firearms classified as assault weapons. Let’s take a look around and see how much of an emergency firearms are causing compared to other threats to health and safety. For our study here we will classify a fatal incident as any incident that terminates the life of a human being in Oregon.

Oregon Traffic Accidents Claim Nearly 500 People In 2016

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*Report source available here at the Oregon.gov website

Traffic accident data lags behind for many reasons. Right now based on the best information we have, there were more than 441 traffic related deaths in Oregon in 2018. As you can see from the above report, there were 44,629 injuries and 498 deaths in 2016 because of traffic crashes.

Leading Causes Of Death In Oregon 

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*Above report from CDC 2016 The CDC report is available here 

As you can see from the above CDC report in 2016, firearm homicide deaths aren’t even on the radar for the top ten causes of death in Oregon.

Abortions In Oregon Claim 8,506 Lives 2017

Regardless of your stand on abortion, It is a major threat to health and safety. According to this report  8,506 lives were lost to abortion in 2017 alone. Some of the same HB 3223 sponsors openly support and promote abortion in our state.

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*Source Oregon.Gov Website

Firearm/Homicide Deaths Don’t Measure Up

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The above report shows that there were 513 firearm deaths and 129 homicides in Oregon in 2016. The report does not give details on how many of those 129 homicides were firearm related, but even assuming they were all firearm related the numbers are a small percentage of the other threats listed above. Based on past trends most deaths related to firearms in Oregon are due to suicide.

You also may want to take a look at this Report From the FBI in 2017. It shows that in 2017 the FBI received a report of 100 homicides in Oregon. Out of those homicides, 58 were firearm related. 

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Is There An Emergency In Oregon Because Of Gun Owners?

House Bill 3223 declares there is an emergency in Oregon because of gun owners. Do you agree based on the numbers above? You will have to decide on this for yourself but we hope these stats will shed some light on what we believe is misleading information offered by the people behind HB 3223.

The United States of America was founded with a constitution that allows it’s citizens the right to bear arms. One of the reasons behind this is a deterrent of foreign invasions from hostile countries. We have to ask ourselves what the next step will be if HB 3223 passes. Otherwise law abiding citizens could become criminals if they don’t register firearms. The State could introduce additional bills revoking the right to own certain firearms and they would already have a starter list of who needs to have guns seized.

We would urge you to contact your representatives and let them know how you feel about this bill. The NRA has a good article about this and other bills being introduced into the Oregon system this year. There is link in the article to take action and the website will help you locate your representative and email them.

We welcome your opinion in the comments here on the blog and on Facebook. Please be respectful to others. We also hope you will direct your opinions to your representatives as they need to hear from voters about this.

Additional Links: 

Click here for more information on how to contact your representative 

Click here for more abortion rate facts from other years provided by Oregon Health Authority