By Sam Bouchat
The recent December shootings in Connecticut and the Clackamas Town Center have sparked a change of behavior among Oregon residents. Gun sales have risen dramatically within the last month in Oregon, promptings questions about the nature of gun laws nationally, as well as in the Pacific Northwest.
According to KATU, a Portland-based television station, 32,000 background checks on were performed over the last month for aspiring gun-owners, more than double the amount this same time last year. Many of these individuals are not buying guns to stick in a forgotten box in the back of their closets – gun safety classes have also seen a large increase in enrollment.
Oregonians aren’t just looking to have a gun on hand: they want to know how to use it.
And can you blame them? For some reason, shootings in the United States this year have more or less taken the media by storm, and the sheer tragedy of each of them—from the July shooting in Colorado at a movie premiere, to the August Wisconsin shooting at a Sikh temple, to the New York killing of two firefighters by a paroled criminal—is putting people on edge. Many believe the only way to fight violence is to be responsibly armed.
Handgun licenses have jumped more than 300 percent in Washington County alone, the metro area still reeling from the Clackamas Town Center mall shooting December 12.
Many believe that gun purchase as a reaction to gun violence is only exacerbating the problem, and creating a self-run spiral of violence. More people with guns creates more fear, fear inspires more people to get guns, and so on and so forth. This view, while understandable, disregards some key factors.
Oregon gun laws are fairly flexible—no state permit of required to purchase firearms, open carry is permitted, firearm registration and owner license are not required. However, it’s not the laws that create accidents or acts of violence: it’s lack of knowledge about the weapon you are carrying.
There is one reason why I am not concerned with the influx of gun purchases in Oregon: that influx runs parallel with a rise in instructional and safety classes.
It makes sense that Oregonians would want to protect themselves, give themselves peace of mind, even if that peace rests with the weapon that causes them concern in the first place. While not a gun-user myself, I understand and accept the fact that people around me are taking advantage of my state’s gun laws to protect themselves, even if I’m not. My views on guns aren’t necessarily conservative: I can place myself into the mindset of one of the thousands of Oregonians who purchased a gun this last month and see the motivation there.
At the same time, I can accept how stricter gun laws in Europe lead the continent to a much smaller homicide rate than the U.S., the country ranked number one in the world for civilian gun ownership.
But gun laws cannot and will not be changed given the current American mindset—that is, guns being both the antithesis and means of personal protection. Whether or not their change would affect violent crimes in the United States is another issue entirely—it’s not merely that Americans can get a hold of guns, but, rather, what guns represent in American culture.
Sam Bouchat is a journalism major/Japanese minor in her last year at the UO. In addition to her position on the Ethos web team, she’s also the film/tv writer for the Emerald, the web editor for Flux Magazine, and is generally too busy to read her Sherlock Holmes books – a reality that she laments.