In the hours after a 16-year-old shot and killed three students and a teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, gun control groups like Giffords and Brady were quick to say "something" must be done. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden also demanded "common sense gun regulations" without offering any details about what those regulations would look like.
Those vague calls to action aren't unusual. They're actually part of the gun control lobby's playbook. What is unusual, though, is the response from Democrat state legislators in Oregon, who say it's too early to talk about legislative action. In fact, they're criticizing Republicans for daring to point out that Democrats blocked a number of school safety bills in recent years that might actually have made a difference.
Democratic lawmakers have largely moved with caution, declining to share specific policy ideas related to gun regulations or school safety in the week after the shooting on the grounds that they are focused on supporting the community. Mack Smith, a spokesperson for Oregon’s House Democrats, told the Capital Chronicle that lawmakers would be in touch when they are ready to comment on policy proposals in response to the shooting.
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, responded within days of the shooting by taking aim at the state’s Democratic leadership, blaming the majority party for failing to pass several bills during the 2023 Legislative session that would have required metal detectors at schools declared gun-free zones, required the state to fund security officers at schools and would have funded a study on the costs and benefits of creating single secure points of entry for schools.
Oregon Republican Party Chair Connie Whelchel in a news release on Oct. 15 shared that her own children once attended Bend-La Pine School District, and praised the 36-year-old father, later identified as Kaylub Giamanco, who grabbed a legally permitted firearm from his car and followed the gunman into the school, killing him. Whelchel also took aim at an Oregon law passed in 2021 that allowed the district to prohibit firearms on school property, regardless of whether an individual has a concealed handgun license.
“We must be willing to examine whether our current policies adequately protect our children and whether they unnecessarily restrict the ability of responsible, law-abiding individuals to respond when innocent lives are in immediate danger,” she said in the news release. “These are questions that deserve thoughtful, serious consideration as the facts become clear.”
Requiring metal detectors at the entrance to all schools wouldn't have done much to stop this shooting, but ensuring armed security was in place at every school may very well have saved lives.
Allowing local school districts to decide whether to allow for lawful carry on school grounds was a terrible idea as well. It's not lawful gun owners like Kaylub Giamanco that school districts have to worry about. The concern is fundamentally over people who aren't legally armed to begin with, and those folks couldn't care less if they're violating a "no guns allowed" policy. In fact, they're counting on being the only one with a gun.
I don't think it's unreasonable at all for Republicans to bring up these bills, but Democrats in Oregon would prefer Republicans (and presumably everyone else) stop talking about them.
“The Republican Party’s release — which criticized specific policies before the facts were released and an investigation has been completed — is not a pathway to better policy, but political grandstanding,” Nathan Soltz, chair of the Democratic Party of Oregon, said in a statement. “There will be a serious conversation about how this happened, but right now the grief in the Bend community should be met with support and understanding, not political agendas.”
Criticizing specific policies (or the failure to adopt them) is a much better pathway to policy than demanding "something" be done without offering up any particulars, which is exactly what Democrats in Oregon have been doing since the shooting at Silver Rail Elementary was first reported. If Soltz was bashing Wyden and other Democrats for their response he might have a shred of credibility, but it seems his objections are reserved only for Republicans.
It's true that the investigation into the shooting continues, and there may very well be other policies that come into play. Based on what we already know, though, there's no reason to avoid a discussion about increasing the number of school resource officers and ensuring that there can be an immediate armed response the next time some coward decides to target a class full of school kids. If Oregon Democrats aren't ready to have that conversation now, I'm not sure they ever will be.
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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