When it comes down to our gun rights, I don’t really care how we win our victories. I’m the kind of guy who would fight dirty simply because I figured what mattered was the win. I played by the rules in sports, but in the real world? No such thing as a fair fight.

So yeah, I’ll take wins however they come.

Even if it’s the result of a state supreme court smacking down an initiative on administrative grounds.

he Oregon Supreme Court has temporarily blocked an initiative that would ban the sale of some semi-automatic guns and high-capacity magazines just over a week before a key deadline, likely stopping it from making the November ballot.

Earlier arguments over Initiative Petition 43 had been fast-tracked. But Wednesday’s ruling triggered a statutory timeline that leaves at most one day for supporters to gather more than 88,000 signatures, and sets it up to become the second prominent gun control proposal to fail after court delays in the state this year.

In its ruling, the court found problems with the official description of Initiative Petition 43 drafted by its supporters. The court ruled that the initiative must be revised before supporters can begin gathering the signatures, which must be delivered no later than July 6 to qualify for the November ballot.

But a court spokesman said Wednesday that even if a revised version were returned immediately, state law requires a five-business-day reply period before the court can approve the new language.

“The earliest the court could act is the morning of the sixth,” said Phil Lemman, a spokesman for the Oregon Judicial Department.

In other words, a snowball has better odds in hell than this does of making it on the ballot.

Win.

Now, I’d have preferred to see this killed on a ballot just as a giant middle finger to those tools who think restricting law-abiding citizens’ access to any kind of firearm somehow makes us safer, but this is Oregon. I’m sure it would have passed and thus imposed new regulations on millions of people. As such, I’ll take the win where we find it.

It’s another reason to take every anti-gun law passed to court. Not only will it impose a kind of penalty for doing so, but the truth of the matter is that some of those laws will be overturned. The right to keep and bear arms is one that is supposed to exist without infringement. Yet laws like this one proposed and numerous others that are already on the books infringe on that right all the time.

At least now, for the people of Oregon, they dodged the proverbial bullet on at least one more potential regulation.

Unfortunately, I fully suspect the anti-gun zealots to bring this back out for next year’s ballot, so pro-gun groups had better dig in and get ready. I doubt they’ll let the same mistake hold them back a second time, either. Oh, they might, but I find that it tends to work out better for you to overestimate your opponents than the other way around.

Dig in, get ready, and kill this again next time around.