Portland has now joined the growing number of cities in Oregon that have embraced the fact that the state now allows them to bar guns in city buildings. This is a pattern we have seen play out all over the place, and while it’s not exactly unexpected, I still find it troubling.
Just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should.
For example, I can lawfully do a lot of things that would make me a terrible person, but I don’t if I can help it. Why? Because it’s wrong. I’m not a perfect person, even by the greatest stretch in the universe, but I try, and that means recognizing that some things are bad ideas, even if you can technically do them.
And that’s what Portland and other Oregon communities have done.
The state granted them the authority to do something , authority that I argue it doesn’t actually have, for the record — and a city like Portland jumped at the chance. They couldn’t wait to do it, and neither can a lot of places.
Whenever we see an exception to, say, preemption laws exists, we see numerous communities jump to embrace those exceptions, as if it’s not an allowance but a mandate.
It’s why I don’t favor them.
Hell, I used to at least tolerate Georgia’s exception, which was barring discharging a firearm in the city limits, but not even that now.
The problem is that even if you take everything else out of the equation, there’s reason to believe that the use of gun-free zones has a direct link to gun thefts.
To quote myself:
In other words, they’re leaving guns in the cars because they can’t carry them inside.
That’s what’s missing from a lot of the official discussions about vehicle gun thefts. These aren’t people leaving guns in the car sitting in their driveways. They’re people who are going to work or going somewhere else where they can’t carry a firearm. It’s not irresponsibility driving this; it’s people trying to follow the law, even if it’s stupid or inconvenient.
So what’s the typical response? To create new legislation that punishes the gun owner, who appears to often be trying to do what’s right by the same laws that now seek to punish them.
And that is the big problem in my book, beyond the unconstitutionality of it.
This creates a fertile ground for would-be gun thieves, who then use those guns in criminal acts, and everyone in Oregon will blame the gun owners for this, even though they’re just trying to do their best with the laws as presented.
Again, just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should.
Like, say, putting gun owners’ firearms at risk of being stolen because you passed an ordinance to address what sure looks like a problem that doesn’t freaking exist.
Not that anyone in Portland’s local government will listen.
Hell, I’m not sure that any of them would care. Or, if they do, it’ll be for the most conspiracy-theory reasons I could imagine in my fevered dreams.
I’m not saying they’re trying to create crime. I’m just saying that this, like so much else, is something I wouldn’t do differently if I were trying to create crime for some nefarious reason.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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