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“[T]he League of Women Voters of Oregon takes issue with the headline’s use of the term “gun control” for a bill that has nothing to do with gun control and everything to do with suicide and domestic violence prevention. SB 719 gives judges the authority to issue “extreme risk protection orders” to remove deadly weapons from those who are deemed to be at imminent risk of harming themselves or others.

In our polarized environment, words matter, and the way an issue is framed is critical.  The term “gun control” implies one side is trying to exert dominance over another, rather than making a sincere attempt to combat Oregon’s high rates of suicide and domestic violence. In the future, we urge you to use more accurate terms, such as “gun safety” or “gun violence prevention.””

Norman Turrill

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103 COMMENTS

  1. Controlling guns will not affect the suicide rate, only the means by which it is achieved.
    Japan has a disarmed populace and a higher suicide rate than the US.
    Keeping someone alive who has had enough of life is cruel punishment.

    • Let’s be honest. This bill allows family members to spread someone’s problems around a courtroom and make it part of public record. Without the person in question needing to be there, or even be notified. Then, once a determination is made, Mr Suicidal gets a full 24hrs to turn his gun in. On top of which, no other means of committing suicide are removed and Mr Suicidal doesn’t receive any help or care. This bill doesn’t combat suicide, it amplifies it. Who’s going to talk to family members they think will spread their problems around behind their back? Who’s going to feel empowered when the state comes for their property? Closed off people who feel powerless are the highest risk of suicide. If suicide and guns were related, then Japan wouldn’t have 3 TIMES the rate of suicide that the U.S. has.

      Look, I hate guns and think we should take them away from everyone. But even I can tell you that pushing suicidal people closer to the edge just so you can take a few guns is a poor Fing strategy. It’s one that will hurt people, help no one, and do nothing for gun violence overall.

      Just because gun owners have small members doesn’t mean we should punish suicidal people by spreading their problems around and taking away their property. It’s just the wrong way to go about disarmament!

      • Exactly right.

        Add to that the fact that it cripples the essential civil right to due process (as in the right to face your accusers and defend yourself before the law takes your property and restricts the rest of your civil rights).

        This is monumentally stupid and harmful idea, and the reasons why have little-to-nothing to do with guns.

      • Let’s take your ridiculous statement about taking guns away from everyone and analyze it. “Everyone” means all the people of the world, in every country, and from all armed services – otherwise, they will filter back into the population. And then we have what? Knives, clubs, crossbows, catapults, bombs, Molotov cocktails, yadda, yadda.

        And, of course, oppression of the weak by the strong. No defense for a woman being attacked by a man. Or a child. Or a family by hoodlums. Unless, of course, they are armed with one of the above weapons. Perhaps you mean all weapons, and all things that could be used as weapons, and all things that could be used to create weapons. OK, so that means that all construction machinery and designs for same, and all rocks and sticks have to be taken away.

        And then we have fists, and the oppression of the weak by the strong again. Are you getting the picture? The Colt was called the great equalizer – it offered the prospect of stopping the oppression of the weak by the strong, by making them equal. Unless, of course, you mean we remove all muscles above a certain level of capability, and all tools to make those muscles stronger, and make sure that all the weak are trained in self-defense.

        But then how do we remove violent urges? Perhaps we drug the population. But we could do that, and not have to confiscate guns or knives or machinery or rocks or muscles.

        So we arrive at the truth: the problem is not guns; the problem is violence. Guns, knives, bats, sticks, and muscles are just agents of violence. You can’t get rid of violence, and if we agree that violence against the innocent is unjust, then it is unjust to remove a tool that offers the prospect of curtailing that violence – as guns do millions of times a year, sometimes without a shot being fired.

        So you are advocating returning to law of the jungle. Thanks, but no thanks – we’ve (at least some of us) evolved since that primitive state.

  2. –more accurate terms, such as “gun safety” or “gun violence prevention.”– Perhaps “Suicide and homicide choice of weapons shifting” would be even more accurate?

      • Holly came from Miami F.L.A.
        Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
        Plucked her eyebrows on the way
        Shaved her legs and then he was a she
        She said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side,
        Said, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side.

    • It has nothing to do with women, and everything to do with patriarchy. See, women are still being kept down, and oppressed by men.

    • I’d rather make jokes about free helicopter rides. Given that the only real solution to this ‘1984’ newspeak garbage is ‘1973’.

    • Recently, a new invention has been created to make your wife do whatever you say…

      It’s called a baseball bat.

    • Maybe I’m being thick…

      Okay, so the angle we’re shooting for with the misogynistic comments is to underscore the point that these women need guns to protect themselves from violent men… do I have it right?

      • Thank you for pointing out what I was thinking. I read these comments thinking this is not the time nor place for this kind of “humor”.

    • Q— What do you tell a woman with 2 black eyes?
      A— Nothing, you already told her twice. (Relax, it’s sarcasm)

  3. “[T]he League of Women Voters of Oregon takes issue with the headline’s use of the term “gun control” for a bill that has nothing to do with gun control and everything to do with suicide and domestic violence prevention.”

    Semantics and shenanigans! Calling rape, “a coerced mating ritual” doesn’t change the act, only the terminology.

    “… words matter…”

    1) Which is exactly why you want to manipulate them by saying, “it’s xyz prevention.”
    2) Words matter? Are you trying to say Black Lives Don’t Matter with that statement, you racist?!?!?

    • If you follow the link in Turrill’s letter to the story he was complaining about, you’ll see that the headline has been modified to read, “Lawmakers pass bill to take guns away from those deemed at risk of suicide, shooting sprees.” What this means is that any judge in Oregon can deprive anyone he doesn’t like of the right to keep and bear arms. Glad I don’t live there.

    • RockOnHellChild wins the Intertubez for the day!

      Although I would argue an even better propaganda wording of rape would be, “an undesired mating ritual”.

      • Only undesired by one party though. And depending on the social and political environment, the mating ritual may be socially acceptable, even if the party being raped doesn’t like it. Witness certain neighborhoods in the Middle East and now Europe.

  4. Norman Turrill, president of the League of Women Voters of Oregon, does not appear to be a woman. Of course, one never knows nowadays.

  5. Is this a ploy from the medical profession? Oregon has doctor assisted suicide, so clearly the state has no problem with suicide, only the manner. Is someone worried about losing “control” of the patient and or the profits?

    • Thanks for the reminder on state sanctioned killing in Oregon. I hope the gun rights community has the guts to use the argument. This is the only way to deal with these double standards. This a just another means of gun control with a different dress.

      There is a lot of money to be made by killing people.

      • Yup. The Liberal Terrorists™ are the greatest proponents of end of life, as well as those at the beginning of life killings, since the Nazis ran free in the 1940’s. But when it involves firearms, well, their hypocrisy knows no bounds.

        • Unless it is their firearms doing the killing then it is fine.

          To repeat the phrase: “it is not about guns it is about people control”

    • This bill is a ploy to infringe upon my God given right to off myself in private! I don’t need some state approved professional jogging my elbow. Have you no decency, Sir! I AM OUTRAGED!! >:(

      Seriously they are going to have it where assisted suicide is o.k. but individual suicide is bad? WTF. That some really perverse nanny stating.

  6. No, I will keep calling it “gun control”, Norman, just to spite your transparent attempt to hide what you and your ilk are up to and conceal your disarmament tyranny behind your particular brand of “newspeak”. Your gun control laws do not make anyone safer, do not prevent crime and the specific law you are referring to egregiously violates the Constitution and civil rights of Americans.
    I take issue with your use of “The League of Women Voters of Oregon “. In the future, we urge you to use more accurate terms, such as “The League of Anti-American Women of Oregon” or “The League of Women Fascists of Oregon.”

  7. It is such an important move to prevent suicide and domestic violence that there is NOTHING in the bill to address suicide or domestic violence other than taking the guns.

    Oh, and you lose your rights without due process.

    Wonder if the League would approach voting rights the same way.

    • “Wonder if the League would approach voting rights the same way.”

      Of course. Why should a man be allowed any civil rights, if a woman who knows him wants to take them away?

  8. I hate to say this as all suicide is a tragedy but if someone wants to take their own life, they will find a way to do it. At least if they do it with a gun they will hopefully be the only death. I would prefer that to death by cop where someone else has to live knowing they took a life, ramming their car into a families minivan causing even more deaths, etc.

    To take ones own life is personal decision. Of course, this may be a money generating gun control tactic since Oregon has “assisted suicides” and charge for it. Maybe guns are cutting into their profits?

  9. Couple blurbs from the text of the bill that trouble me:

    1. “(g) Evidence of an acquisition or attempted acquisition within the previous 180 days by the respondent of a deadly weapon;”

    Just buying a firearm in the last six months is enough evidence for the judge to grant the petitioner’s request to disarm you.

    2. “The court may not include in the findings any mental health diagnosis or any connection between the risk presented by the respondent and mental illness.”

    Why not consider a psych eval before granting the order? I thought that’s typically how these went down. A family member petitions the court for an emergency psych eval and swears out an affidavit that the respondent threatened themselves or another. Then the judge would grant the emergency psych eval. If you were found a threat, then you could be forcibly committed for observation. Yet this bill says the psych eval will not be considered before issuing an “extreme risk protection” order and seizing your deadly weapons.

    The “extreme risk protection” order would be in effect within 24 hours after the order was granted and would last at least one year.

    • Don’t forget any car that can go over 70, oh and large trees while you’re at it. And drain-o. And anti-freeze. And……

    • SB 719 gives judges the authority to issue “extreme risk protection orders” to remove SOME deadly weapons from those who are deemed to be at imminent risk of harming themselves or others. Fixed.

      If they don’t like the term Gun Control, let’s call it Gun Grab.

  10. I am still stuck at the notion of many women that the availability of firearms increases the disparity of fighting effectiveness between men and women.

    • There is no disparity in physical ability between men and women; don’t you want movies… Nevermind, having separate leagues for men and women, with lesser rules and requirements for women. That is just keep them from making us men look bad.

    • That’s because THOSE women see guns in the hands of a man, rather than in their own – which would equalize, rather than imbalance, the fighting effectiveness. I suspect it comes from the natural evolution of gender roles of men as predators and women as prey.

  11. Just call the thing the Unconstitutional Death of Due Process Bill – because if you think these fascists are stopping with gun control, you’re nuts.

  12. Tell Norman it’s past time for some historical literacy. National Council to Control Handguns, 1974. Handgun Control Inc., 1980. His side has been promoting the use of the word “control” in this particular context for decades.

  13. Hey you don’t have to call it Gun Control. How about “Gun Grabbing” or “from YOUR cold dead hands”. Sorry Oregon is being caliFORNICATED?

  14. Yet these hypocritical, filthy subhuman Liberal Terrorists™ fight tooth and nail for the rights of assisted suicide, along with genocidal abortions.

  15. SB 719 gives judges the authority to issue “extreme risk protection orders” to remove deadly weapons from those who are deemed to be at imminent risk of harming themselves or others.

    Every year, criminals attack and kill more people with their hands and feet than they do with rifles and shotguns. By definition hands and feet are therefore more deadly than rifles and shotguns. If a judge agrees that a person is “at imminent risk of harming … others” and orders the state to remove that person’s rifles and shotguns, why does the judge/state let that person roam free with the deadlier weapons of hands and feet?

    Follow-up question: why does the judge/state let that imminently dangerous person also roam free with knives, hammers, chemicals, and vehicles?

  16. They are frustrated that their goals – I’ll take them at their word – are being obstructed by virtue of the name of their proposal raising a flag among those opposed to gun control. The problem is that government bills are often proposed with names that are masquerades of their true nature. Is there any better example than “The Affordable Care Act.” Affordable? No. Care? No. Act? Yup. All an act.

    • I nominate the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, lovingly acronymed into the USA PATRIOT Act. What a name for unconstitutional intrusion by govt into every aspect of citizens’ lives.

      • Whoever came up with that acronym should get a medal. And a free helicopter ride with serge.

      • For that bill title to have been accurate, it should have provided for every American to have an AR, a thousand rounds of ammo, and access to free training on ow to spot and respond to terrorists.

  17. There is a strong effort on the part of gun-control activists to turn routine gun-ownership into a form of deviant behavior which can then be shunned by “right thinking people”. Once this happens a phenomenon called “medicalization of deviance” takes place where gun-ownership is redefined from being deviant behavior to being a from of mental illness. The Center for Disease Control has already attempted to do this on a couple of occasions. If you can turn gun-ownership into a sickness—or use a sickness as an excuse to impose gun-control—then politicized, state sanctioned “health-care professional” bureaucrats can seize people’s weapons whenever they choose. Anyone, for instance, who was ever treated for depression or who even discussed clinical depression can be said to be potentially suicidal and then become immediately vulnerable to having their gun confiscated by the state “for their own protection”. The old Soviet Union used this very tactic against political dissidents: you had to be mentally ill to protest against the worker’s paradise so a stent in a mental hospital being dosed with thorazine would fix you right up.

  18. So it’s not gun control if the state is controlling guns for the children or for depressed people or for possible victims of domestic violence or travelers or police or government officials or priests or bartenders or BLM or California or Maryland or New York City or New Jersey or D.C. or Boston or for college students and professors or demonstrators waving rubber dicks round.

    Got it.

    • Fun fact: waving around a real dick will get you arrested… and asked out on date… by a guy named Rafael… don’t ask me how I know…

  19. Seems like the rights of the people of Oregon are on life support and certain folks want to use the state’s assisted suicide law to forcibly pull the plug.

    While they’re at it perhaps they can change “stealing” to “permanently borrowing without asking” and make such claims an affirmative defense against charges of theft.

  20. If their cause is so just and everyone is in favor of it, as we keep hearing over and over, why do they keep having to conceal its goals and change its name?

  21. People like to think semantics are trivial. They most certainly are not: it is an attempt at presenting a losing argument in a positive light. It’s how abortion came to be called reproductive rights in the 90’s and nomadic Arabs in Palestine came to be called Palestinians in the 50’s…it makes arguments for each cause sound noble when it never was. Gun control is about control…always was, and always will be. It’s only gun safety insofar as they can eliminate the very existence of guns, but, oh, it sounds far nobler!

    • It’s also how people born in Jordan, living in Jordan, whose parents were invited into Jordan are called Palestinian refugees instead of Jordanians. (This is true for just about every “Palestinian refugee” camp in each country).

  22. The problem is that there is a “League of Women Voters” to begin with.

    Women’s Suffrage, stripping rights and restricting freedoms since 1920, because feelz.

  23. Tyrannical Asshole Lying FV<k – There's nothing about what you're proposing that has anything to do with "safety".

    Even if you were interested in 'safety' WHICH YOU ARE FING NOT, it should be illegal for aholes like you to claim that you can, in any way, provide-it, BECAUSE THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

    Why don't you try performing some real protection? Let's go for something easy. LET'S SEE YOU STOP ASS-RAPE IN PRISON. If you could do that, we'd have fewer of you, as you are the product of it.

    We've seen the evil POS (D) sh_t-out too many of your kind.

    you need to F yourself with something sharp and heavy.

  24. When discussing new speak and word smithing, let’s not forget the Affordable Healthcare Act. You didn’t really expect them to call it the The Health Insurance Mandate and Wealth Redistribution Act, did you?

  25. if it looks like a pig and walks like a pig and sequels like a pig, it’s probably a pig. why should we call it a bunny rabbit?

    • If it looks like a pig and walks like a pig and squeals like a pig, and smells like a pig, and is fat like a pig, and hairy like a pig, with a pushed in nose and fat face like a pig, and sweats like a pig, and eats garbage like a pig, then it’s probably . . . Hillary. Particularly if it’s wearing a pantsuit and standing next to a pig smoking a cigar and mating with a goat.

  26. So, “Norman,” tell me why you are speaking for the League of Women Voters since you are not a woman?

  27. “Gun safety”, huh? So what safe handling classes does your organization teach? What are the Four Rules of Firearms Safety? Hmm? How many firearms instructors does your organization certify each year? You don’t “support gun safety”, you encourage gun fear you lying scum.

  28. Reading all this makes me think that I should start a “League of Men Voters” organization, as everyone else seems to have their own little niche. Problem would be finding a few good men nowdays, present company excepted of course.

  29. Sent this to my MA rep a while ago (R) and to the (D) that brought the law. MA’s is very much boilerplate to what is making the rounds. Totally one-sided. The way that it is written, with no other indications of mental health issues, the warrant can be issued if one simply and only buys a gun. Tell me that is not gun control via veiled confiscation.


    The act itself under the guise of a warrant process does abuse rights of any person petitioned against and it should be rewritten to accommodate for the “Respondent’s” rights as strongly as it currently reads against by omission. What is the force of evidence that justifies the warrant? As written, these are very weak.

    There should be no “Is and was” in the allowance for filing an order. Where a “Petitioner” is absent from interaction with the individual, from the “Respondent”, there can be no validity in the petition.

    Really, only a family member not estranged from the “Respondent” could even remotely be able to provide a reasonable petition and then, we must have the court completely inspect the petition.

    How in any justification can buying a firearm in itself be cause for filing a petition. At the least the justification should be something such as “The person has demonstrated harmful actions toward themselves, is being actively treated for depression, and has recently purchased a firearm.”

    There must be monetary and civil recourse if an individual is served with such an order, where the order is not justified. After all, the act is disregarding the rights of each individual served should not be ignored.

    The act cannot assume that the petitioner is correct which it does in its current form. There must be checks and balances,

    There must be a fast hearing where the Respondent can face the Petitioner. Where the petitioner must prove their claim. The Respondent must be provided an attorney if they cannot afford one. Where the petitioner looses, they must pay all fees, as well as, fine(s).

    Penalties for perjury in filing should start at $10,000. Not up to. There are documented instances where such a process is used to harass another. The filing not properly vetted “he threatened me”. $10,000 is not excessive. If one is not lying, there is no penalty.

    Where any person is living independently and doing no harm, and they are subject to a knock on the door confiscation of their property and an arbitrary determination that they are unfit, to which they must prove otherwise, then the act is very much contrary to the foundation of law and rights that form the core of our values on may levels; very much contrary to the Constitution that is in place to guide government’s actions by and for the citizenry.

  30. If I waive use of the term gun control, it’ll only be in favor of the even more accurate term gun confiscation. This is just a sick, cynical ploy to exploit vulnerable people. The antis are confiscating in the name of mentally ill people. The scheme provides a mantle of legitimacy to their unconscionable gun grab having nothing to do with suicide, public health, or safety.

  31. Here is a youtube video of Dana Loesch calling out Mark Glaze for having “the audacity to claim that you’re for gun safety.” She interupts Glaze when he says that no one knows the number of DGUs because the NRA won’t let “us” do the research.

    Every time someone claims to be for “gun safety” they should be called out as liars. (Unless it’s someone like the NRA or NSSF who actually promotes gun safety).

    https://youtu.be/Qrp2zZUJP9s?t=250

  32. Come to think of it, I wish I’d remembered a suicide I found out about at a party one night and contacted Boquist with the account: a girl was depressed and a cop friend of the family told the parents they should put all their guns out of reach. One of those guns was hers — and the prospect of having it taken away because her family didn’t trust her tipped her over the edge. She acted before the parents did, and splattered her brains all over the front of the house using her dad’s 12-gauge.

    I also knew a guy in college who was on the edge, but ready to talk to friends and get help — until he found that a couple of the officers in the house had on their own entered his room and disabled his guns without talking to him at all, at which point he downed every pill in his room, including forty-plus Benedryl, sixty-plus Prozac, over a hundred lithium, and more.

    It should be plain to anyone who stops to think that the message sent by taking away someone’s guns without discussing it is, “We don’t value you enough to discuss your life with you” — and getting a court to order it for them adds, “We have so little respect for you we’d rather have you treated like a criminal than actually talk to you”.

    • I’ve often let someone define all the terms in an argument and still beat them. The trick is to define the terms and then make them stick to those definitions.

      If someone wants to call themselves a gun safety organization, make them define gun safety. They probably can’t even do it.

        • One of the things I noticed is that people won’t stick to the issue at hand. If you pin people down to definitions and specific points, they have no idea how to respond to that.

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