Permit-to-buy starts Dec. 8 unless 114 struck down, state police say
SALEM Ore. (KPTV) - Oregon State Police will pause all pending background checks for purchasing a firearm at midnight on Wednesday when Measure 114 becomes law, state police said Friday. Unless the measure is struck down, anyone with a pending purchase will then need to apply for and obtain a Permit-to-Purchase before the sale can be completed.
Police also warned that the Firearms Instant Check System unit has been dealing with “unprecedented volumes” of firearm transactions since Nov. 8 after the measure passed in Oregon by a few thousand votes.
Under current Oregon law, OSP is required to provide and maintain an instant background check system for licensed gun dealers and private people to access before selling a firearm. State law also requires OSP to notify the dealer and provide an estimate of time if the background check will take more than 30 minutes. Such checks are listed as pending or delayed.
RELATED: Gun sales skyrocket in Oregon after passage of Measure 114
“BM114 becomes law on Dec. 8,” police said. “OSP continues to work diligently to process and resolve as many of the pended/delayed FICS transactions as possible.”
Police said delayed FICS transactions are normally from missing, incomplete or incorrect information.
“OSP must contact the agency that is the owner of that information to obtain official records,” police said. “There are no required timelines for the agencies to respond to our requests for missing or incomplete information.”
A draft of the application for a Permit-to-Purchase is final reviews and will be posted to the OSP website on Dec. 8, police said. With 114 scheduled to become law on Thursday, the OSP has a short window to launch the new program.
RELATED: Lawsuit filed to stop Oregon’s Measure 114: Read the whole thing
“Because of this, the Permit-to-Purchase program at Oregon State Police will be a manual paper process until new technical systems can be designed and implemented,” police said.
Measure 114 lawsuit
Federal Court Judge Karin Immergut heard oral arguments Friday whether or not she should place an injunction on Measure 114, but said she won’t make a ruling until Monday or Tuesday.
If she grants the injunction, Measure 114 would be put on pause while its constitutionality is battled out in Federal Court. Two lawsuits are challenging the constitutionality of the magazine capacity limit of the new law.
Union County Sheriff Cody Bowen is one of the plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits argued in court Friday. His team argued that having a limit on magazine capacity puts law-abiding citizens at a disadvantage against criminals and regulating magazine capacity violates the Second Amendment.
“Having less than ten rounds is a big safety concern is a safety concern for me,” Bowen said.
Plaintiffs also argued that most handguns come with magazines greater than 10 rounds. So, they say Measure 114 will ban a whole class of guns.
But the defense said times have changed since the 19th century.
“The Supreme Court has recognized the state maintains some ability to make regulations when there are new social ills and new technologies that did not exist in 1791,” said Michael Kron, special counsel for the Oregon Attorney General’s office.
But the federal judge presiding over this case is also analyzing arguments in a new way. This year, the Supreme Court ruled in a gun control case that any new gun laws must be interpreted using the plain text of the second amendment. This means a person’s individual right to bare arms for self-defense cannot be infringed. If the government does pass gun control laws, then the regulation must be part of historical tradition, such as banning the sale of poisonous bullets. Even if the law goes into effect next week, the Union County Sheriff said there is still no clear plan for citizens to lawfully buy guns.
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