A recent article in the local newspaper reported that the Oregon Senate passed a bill on May 5, 2021 that mandates safe storage of guns. Its purpose is to prevent not only accidental shootings by children, but also suicides and mass shootings.
Of course Republican lawmakers “strenuously objected” because, according to them, it “deprives individuals of the ability to defend themselves.”
A second part of the bill was to ban guns from the State Capitol. Currently, concealed handgun licensees can bring firearms into the Capitol.
In opposition to this part of the bill, one of the esteemed Republican Senators spoke on the Senate floor saying he needed a gun to “defend himself from people outside the building.”
His exact words:
When I come into the Capitol, I bring a gun because if I happen to walk out the door – have you seen all the homeless people and the other people walking around here in the evening? I do not feel overly safe outside of this building at night.
Poor dear.
The thing that stood out to me is … how many homeless people have been known to attack/shoot at politicians when they leave a government building? Or even an ordinary person that just happens to be “walking around … in the evening”?
The article concluded with a story relayed by a Representative who used to be a paramedic. She was almost in tears as she told of being called to the home of a fatal shooting of a child by a friend. She said the gun had been found under a bed while they were playing. She concluded her story with this remark:
We could not save him, and he died while his father howled the most unimaginable sounds in the next room.
The Democratic Governor will be reviewing the bill when it reaches her desk. She has repeatedly spoken out about the need to pass sensible gun legislation … so one would anticipate her signature.
And most likely, loud howls from the Republicans.
Nan's Notebook 
So doesn’t the argument go that he wouldn’t need to defend himself as everyone else would be under the same constrictions to keep their weapons safe. The same argument as for not taking guns into the senate.. Do all the other senators etc feel unsafe when they leave the building at night? What do those without guns do?
The gun nuts will do anything to keep their toys away from being safe, even to the point of sacrificing their children. Listen to the majority of your voters senators, act for them and not the NRA and it’s clients. Your voters pay you as well.
Huge Hugs
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Okay, so the politician has a gun when he leaves the building, and when a “homeless” person approaches him maybe to ask directions to the nearest Seven Eleven, said politician, fearing for his life, whips out his pistol and shoots him. Now that’s what I call Republican logic. The Senator uses “fear” as a tactic to create an enemy, and surprise, surprise, the enemy is someone who is defined according to his lack of economic status.
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And this guy is a Senator? a guy who is likely considered to have some intelligence and rational ideas that will benefit the state and the people at some time…..so what mental asylum did they find this poor individual in, is it the same one Trump lives in?
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Senator? It certainly makes a mockery of our supposedly safe, Constitutional democracy here… for the world to keep laughing at us every time another body-bag is filled with way too many gun-carrying family members everywhere, and sadly including nurseries, kindergartens and schools. 😔
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There have been 147 mass shootings so far this year according to the Forbs site, and I have not even checked out how many accidental deaths and injuries have occurred from firearms over this time.
It may get to the point when the people of the US say enough, however with brainless Senators spouting lies to the gullible masses it may never get to that point.
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Unless they can be reminded that they take a vow towards working for their voters and that who in fact pays them and deserves their loyalty, not the NRA. Politicians should not be allowed to accept donations from outside their pay from people who would expect something in return.
Hugs
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Your last sentence is a zinger! But of course it will never happen. In fact, I’m convinced that many (most?) who enter politics today are doing it more for the $$$$ than for the purpose of helping and improving conditions for the people that elect them.
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Sadly true.
Hugs
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Fully Anonymous Donors in the most purest method possible. Wouldn’t that just be a DREAM, fully democratic nation!? But even though PAC’s have explicit, stringent prohibitions on the outside, I’m sure these Congressmen and women as well as the mega donors e.g. the Koch brothers/family—and all the corporations and upper 1% – 10% of Conservative Americans—would STILL find covert ways to get “attached” (with strings) to their political candidates and Party as controlling Puppeteers. Prime example: charitable gifts. From a 2020 study in the American Economic Review:
I believe it is a long-standing, “proud American tradition,” particularly in the (Deep) South formerly known as the Confederate States of America, also in America’s Midwest, that many (millions?) super patriotic Americans feel that the concepts of freedom, liberty, and Free-market Capitalism equals our historic Wild Wild West where “American ingenuity equals borderline lawlessness” (i.e. less government if you want the modern terminology) and “absolutely rubberized sociopolitical principles and ethics!” IOW, everything is always negotiable and if it isn’t negotiable publicly, then make it so in our “legal” Black Underground Inc. in the backrooms and dark alleys. THIS mentality is deeply embedded over many generations of 18th- and 19th-century American immigrant-families who arrived here (or to escape from or because of) ironically… the inequality in European social-classes, repressions, and cookie-cutter laws, norms, prejudice, and racism.
How comical it is that the “new,” untamed, untouched (unpopulated?) 18th-century United States and specifically the slave-states of the South was indeed, for the most part westward from the Appalachian Mtns. and Mississippi River, the “DREAM” Wild Wild West of Republican-Conservative no government, less government, and more guns/weapons in all American’s hands & homes (as Town Militias of course!)… to use the modern Republican terminology and rhetoric. We are edging closer and closer, and have been since at least Citizens United vs. FEC (2010) to a 21st-century Wild Wild West (white-man) nation. 🙄
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Agree David, it is blatant bribery.
Bribery is defined by Black’s Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official, or other person, in charge of a public or legal duty. Wikipedia.
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It seems that if this politician is afraid of homeless people, then he’s in the wrong business! Where’s the compassion, the heart??? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Damn people will make up any excuse, no matter how far-fetched and illogical, to tote their big boy’s toys around with them in order to make up for their lack in other areas. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
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The only thing he’s afraid of is pissing off like minded numskulls at the polls. Conservative America is toothless without fear.
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[…] is close to tears, testifying about a little kid finding a gun under a bed and how her best efforts could not save the child that was shot. […]
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Nan, quite simply, the safe storage of guns is something most gun owners support as they know the danger. The Republicans have this “slippery slope” mantra that any change that has the three letters G-U-N in it must be avoided. My strong advice is to Google “six year old shoots or four year old” or something similar and read the stories.
And, if that is not enough, I once told my father-in-law, who I learned had a rifle that my boys discovered that he needed to unload it or lock it up. I said, if you don’t I cannot bring the kids by. He knew immediately what he needed to do.
I hate when legislators forget they are parents, uncles/ aunts and grandparents. Guns kill people, so we need to keep them locked away from toddlers. If a gun owner does not agree with that statement, then in my view, they should be charged with manslaughter or negligent homicide if someone gets shot with their unlocked gun. Keith
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Exactly Keith, if you leave a kid in a car with the engine running and they move the leaver to drive and kill someone I should expect the adult would be charged with negligent homicide at the very least.
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Nan, I couldn’t resist commenting. I know it’s difficult to fathom. Who could be against safe storage of a firearm? But, I have seen this first hand. When, I was a child welfare worker in a rural area, I was called to investigate a case back in the mountains. One of the first concerning things I noticed was that Dad kept a shotgun propped in the corner of the home within easy access of his five or six year old daughter. He had no problem sharing with me that this gun was fully loaded. He needed it right at hand to drive off the coyotes who were after his chickens. This gentleman proudly claimed that his little girl had been taught how to “handle herself” around guns and she knew not to touch it. I think there can be this strange culture around firearms that overrides people’s common sense. Why, I don’t know.
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This is the standard pitch of those who think a gun in the household is a priority. Sometimes their “education” works … sometimes it doesn’t.
In many (most?) cases, the individuals who have a gun “for protection” (against what … or whom?) are the ones who rarely discuss its lethality with any children in the household. They assume if they hide (??) it well enough, all will be fine. As noted in my post, it doesn’t always work out that way.
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We have three dogs and eleven cats and five chickens. Not once in the years since the chickens arrived has one of the birds suffered as much as the loss of a single feather.
But perhaps I should get a gun just in case there is a sudden outbreak of Hungry Lions wandering around the suburbs of Johannesburg?
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Well, you never know … 🤔
😄😂😂🤣🤣😅
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As you can well imagine, I monitor the news for such an incident 24/7 … just in case.
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Ark my friend can I sell you an ex- London Second World War searchlight, some motion alarms, a brave guard dog, a trip flare system and a claymore mine going cheap?
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Only if they are in camouflage green to match the machine gun nest on the front lawn .
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Well, Ark, I’m soon to visit my son in Alaska. I just read where someone in the area had been mauled by a grizzly. My kiddo has already informed me that we can’t go hiking without a gun or bear spray. Moose can also be a problem. Good grief. I love the outdoors, but why do they want to live up there, between the wildlife and the weather in the winter. He’s working at a kid’s summer camp, where people are actually assigned to surveil the perimeter of the woods.
I better make sure I’m “prayed up” Ark. LOL 🙂
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“…deprives individuals of the ability to defend themselves.”
As it does many reasonable, practical people, and you Nan, this sort of BS rhetoric gets my goat every time. 😠 Do we live in a 21st-century nation which is a hyper-volatile, untamed, and grave? Are we Americans living with our heads on a swivel constantly scared around every corner, every single day we walk out the door that some wild beast or pack of beasts will pounce and devour us, our children/babies, and ransack our homes and family heirlooms? Really!? Are you effin’ Republicans and hyper-violent American “sports hunters” cognitively challenged!?
In this time and day, compared to say when weapons and gun-powder were only first discovered, are we under constant daily threat to defend ourselves, our lives, family and property? Daily I’m saying! Or even more than once a month!? Once a year? Is EVERYONE in the Republican Party or in the hobby of “sports hunting” also in law-enforcement or Black Op Special Forces!? WTF! No, no, no, and NO! It’s the 21st-century you morons. We (supposedly) live in a “civilized” country!
Btw, who tha DUCK stirred up this hornet’s nest of dangerous mobs outside of state and federal buildings in the first place!? It damn sure wasn’t the (passive, generally non-violent) Democrats, or many other typically passive liberals—who ironically tend to be highly educated with under-grad or post-grad degrees!
Nan, I hear way too many horror stories like that grieving, howling Father over his accidentally shot baby son. It has been a statistically known fact for AT LEAST one or two decades now that most all gun fatalities in the U.S.—or far too many—are simply fatalities among family members owning guns/weapons (too many) on their own loved ones, NOT hungry beasts, monsters, criminals, violent mobs, or invading foreign armies. Period.
Rwwwaaaaarrrrrrr!!! You’ve got my blood boiling now Nan. Thanks. 🤨
😉
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Sorry. 😕
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I know you know I was joking, unfairly projecting onto you rather than your Oregon Senator and all hyper sports hunting hobbyist and pro-gun enthusiasts. 🙂
This type of flawed thinking about domestic as well as public safety in the U.S. has been more less a modern phenomenon, or cancer, and not at all about the Second Amendment or exactly what our core Founding Fathers intended in 1787 nor in 1791. Because those very wise, highly educated men KNEW full well that over time, long periods of time, there had to be a method and protocols to adjust, tweak, modify, or amend our Constitution based on the OBVIOUS: inevitable change! Duh, right?
It is safe to say, presume, and now be civically responsible in the 21st-century because the U.S.A. has very little need for 18th-century “town militias.” Case and point…
Enough said.
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Well, basicly all conservative politics are driven by fear. It is a good base for politics, because fear is a natural feature of humans. Especially the fear of the unknown. To the ignorant, there are more unknown factors in the world and thus more to fear. It is also easier to appeal to the ignorant by advertizement or even by outright lying. They are much more likely to react to any wild claims by their emotions (such as fear), than by rational research. The ignorant is also much more voulnerable to superstitious and moralist claims.
What are major concerns by wich conservative politicians throughout the world appeal to their voters?
– Fear of the outsider, the poor, the immigrant, the different religion, culture or even a colour of skin. (Tribal moralism appeals to the fearfull.)
– Fear of the change, that is any evolution of rules, regulations, culture or even ethics. (Since being unable to evaluate things in actual context makes a person dependant on relying on authoritarian rules, rather than making an informed ethical choise.)
– Fear of losing priviledges, as in having a better world for everyone. (Since they seem unable to make the separation between a priviledge and a right.)
– Fear of spending. Throughout the world conservative politicians represent themselves as guardians of better economies by saving money by not spending it on developing the society towards social equality and higher standards of public healthcare, but conservative governments spend ridiculous amounts of money on taxcuts, military and support for the big businesses (ie. corruption). Most often they leave the government economy in a worsened state and excuse it by saying that it proves people need a “small government”.
If this senator is so affraid of the homeless, that he feels he needs to carry a gun, should he not then be making all possible efforts to make sure people do not end up as homeless? I am guessing he has done nothing of the sort. Altough, traditionally, the conservative politician excuses their corruption to transfer public money to big business by claiming it somehow magically (by lying in their bank accounts in the tax paradises) provides jobs for the poor, just like lessening the social support for them magically creates more jobs…
It is a strange thought though, that having more guns in the society makes it more safe from gun violence. Would anybody ever argue that having more cars in the society makes it less likely for people to end up in car related accidents?
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EXCELLENT input, rautakyy!! Spot-on!
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