U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- As homicides in Portland, Oregon climb toward setting a new record, a group of grassroots gun rights activists have launched a campaign called “Responsible Response” to possibly reverse a new restrictive gun control law scheduled to take effect late next month by putting it on the ballot in November 2022.
According to a recent guest column in the Blue Mountain Eagle, Senate Bill 554—signed by anti-gun Democrat Gov. Kate Brown in June—requires that guns be locked up at all times they are not being carried or under the control of the owner. Beaver State activist gun owners are not happy about this, and the Responsible Response effort is their attempt to derail the law. They filed Referendum Petition 301 with the Oregon Secretary of State. It requires 74,680 signatures of registered voters by Sept. 25 to qualify, and according to guest columnist Richard F. LaMountain, if they get those signatures “the bill’s enactment will be delayed pending the vote’s outcome.”
“To sign the petition,” LaMountain wrote, “go to responsibleresponse.com and print, sign and mail a single-signature petition to the listed address. Or come to the Grant County Fair between Aug. 11 and Aug. 14 and sign a petition at the Responsible Response booth in the Trowbridge Pavilion.”
It may be possible to gather the required signatures, considering the bad publicity Portland’s body count is receiving. The Rose City appears in chaos. According to the Portland Oregonian, as of Sunday, the city had logged 58 homicides, surpassing the number posted for the entire year of 2020, which ended with 55 slayings.
More alarming to people keeping tabs on the mayhem is that with more than four months remaining, the number is edging closer to the record of 70 murders set in 1987.
It hasn’t helped that the Portland Police Bureau has lost more than 100 officers over the past year. According to Fox News, the agency “is struggling to find officers willing to serve on a newly resurrected gun violence team – a year after its original unit was disbanded at the height of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. The once-prestigious positions on the Portland’s Gun Violence Reduction Team are now considered less desirable due to the added scrutiny that comes with the role.”
The Oregonian/Oregon Live noted that two of this year’s fatal shootings involved police, so whether they are part of the current body count isn’t clear. Tuesday saw two more killings, according to KPTV News.
Portland is hardly alone in its position as a city controlled by far-left politicians that has seen spiking violent crime over the past 18 months. The “defund police” movement has had a negative impact on police agencies in several major cities, and the results are coming back to bite the politicians that embraced the notion of reducing or even eliminating police departments, what the advocates of such proposals called “reimagining” law enforcement.
But as a recent case in Seattle demonstrates, one doesn’t “reimagine” very well when armed murder suspects open fire on police and must be taken down.
As reported by the Seattle Times, Seattle police fatally shot a murder suspect identified as Isaiah Hinds in the suburban community of White Center a few days ago. He was the subject of a warrant in the March slaying of 19-year-old Omari Wallace at a church. According to reports at the time, a gunman entered the Emerald City Bible Fellowship on March 17, spotted Wallace, and pulled a gun. Wallace was shot several times.
Ironically, the shooting occurred during a meeting of “Community Passageways,” described by the newspaper as “a diversion program that works with young people to keep them out of the legal system.”
For weeks, homicide detectives tried to track down the suspect, so when his whereabouts was learned, the house was surrounded by SWAT officers and “gun violence reduction” officers. An alarming video of the confrontation clearly shows officers ordering Hinds to come outside with his hands raised.
Instead, as can be clearly seen, he emerged through the front door with a gun in his right hand. Three audible shots can be heard, followed by responding shots from police.
Hinds died at the scene, and in his hand was clutched a .45-caliber Glock 21 pistol later revealed to have been stolen in June.
As is typical, none of the “defund police” advocates had anything to say in the aftermath.
While Seattle has a larger population than Portland, its body count so far is much lower. According to the “Seattle Homicide” Twitter page, which is not connected to the police department, as of July 26 the city had posted 28 murders. But with months remaining in 2021, that number is undoubtedly going to climb. Last year, Seattle saw 52 murders, according to the Seattle Police Crime Dashboard.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
Meanwhile, Oregon’s governor has signed a law removing the requirement to read and write from the requirements to graduate high school. That is no joke. She said, in effect, that brown and black people are not smart enough to learn to read and write. No wonder such a governor thinks you and are are to stupid to care for our firearms appropriately.
Sounds like y’all gettin’ boon-shaka-laka‘ed…..
The general plan, in case anyone out there still has of yet to figure it out, is to “nationalize” all civilian police forces. I.E. – to replace all local police departments, starting in America’s biggest bluest democrat run cities, with nationalized police forces which are directly funded by and therefore directly answerable only to the hard core leftists corrupting Washington DC. They want to make it impossible for cities to hire and maintain sufficient law enforcement to maintain any real semblance of law & order, and part of achieving their goals is simply to allow the crime and violence to… Read more »
What is an unlawful order?
Are orders to enforce Red Flag laws unlawful?
Many thousands of Red Flag law orders have been enforced by “red state” enforcers (county sheriffs/town PDs) who followed orders.
this IS their plan, and Beeyellem and Auntie Fah are their tools to imlement it. Its all straight out of Kearl Marx by way of Saul Alinsky. Destabilise, bring in chaos, and when The People are scared out of their minds step up and inform “da peepul” that “we have the Final Solution”, trust us, and all will be well. Lets see, Stalin, Mao, Trotsky, PolPot, the Kim family of Korea, Hitler, Idi Amin, Mussollini, Pinochet, Castros, Noriega, Mandela, Ortega, Allende, just a few that come reaily to mind, are good examples of this plan implemented.
Shouldn’t you be pleading with DiFi or Schmuck Schumer instead of yapping on AmmoLand like a Chatroom Commando?
What moron thought this would make the world safer? Seriously, anything Portland does do help safety… DO THE OPPOSITE!
“Either be a shining example or a horrible warning”… yea, that’s western Oregon and their idiot liberal ideology!
If there are those who don’t see her actions as being condescending, then we need to be adding to the curriculum instead of deleting from it. Obviously, she is declaring that there are certain groups who are too ignorant to grasp the subject matter, so we’ll just make it easier for them to excel by lowering the requirement standard. That might look good on their school report card, but it won’t be an asset when they’re attempting to convince a job interviewer that they’re fully qualified for the position they are seeking.
Portland and Oregon deserve what they getting. You people voted Communist Democrap Leftists into office. You are reaping what you have sown! LIVE WITH IT UNTIL THE NEXT ELECTION AND THEN CHANGE IT!!!
An YUUUUGE part of Portland’s problem along these lines is their DA and “just-us” department. They let serous criinals go fre,e no bail, IF they even apprehend them in the first place. Many are never even charged. Meanwhile when a known journalist is backed up into a corner by a mob of angry antifa types, his life clearly in danger, he draws his firearm, legally carried, keeping it at low ready as he tries to back out of the trap, and makes good his escape… the DA orders his arrest, procecutes him with feliny charges, takes his gun, jails him… Read more »
“I was a reform NRA Board member for 9 years. We tried to remove Wayne in 1997. We lost 32-33 with David Workman crossing over to block the reform.”
https://www.ammoland.com/2019/07/shit-storm-todays-nra-heads-need-to-roll/#comment-2765008
“I too served with you in that era, and had forgotten about Workman’s duplicity.”
https://www.ammoland.com/2019/07/shit-storm-todays-nra-heads-need-to-roll/#comment-2766267