While the worst of Oregon’s gun control push is over, the state seems bound and determined to enact some form of gun control this legislative term. That’s to be expected from a state overrun with anti-gun zealots.

However, some are working to stop this from happening, including professional groups.

The Oregon Cattlemen’s Association urges its members to submit testimony in opposition to Oregon Senate Bill 978, an omnibus gun control package, which would require firearms be kept unavailable for self-defense and would expand bun[sic] free zones.

The bill legalizes age discrimination on gun purchases, penalizes theft victims if their guns are misused after being stolen, requires everyone to lock up their firearms regardless of circumstance and ends homebuilt firearms among other things.

There’s nothing remotely to like in this bill.

From a cattleman’s standpoint, I can see a number of reasons this would be problematic. For one, requiring guns to be locked up means they’re not available should the need arise to defend their herd from a predator. Further, ranches aren’t exactly in the city. That means help may be hours away, making ranches inviting targets to some of the worst excuses of humanity.

By requiring guns to be locked up, it means these threats are far more difficult to meet.

Further, those in the cattle industry do occasionally leave home. Even if they do lock their guns up, while they’re gone their homes could easily be targeted by those who want something to steal and don’t want neighbors to notice. Under this law, they could be held liable for actions undertaken with their stolen guns.

Even if the law is only meant to punish those who didn’t secure their guns, how many prosecutors will assume that since a firearm was stolen, it wasn’t secured? How many will disbelieve that the weapons were secured somehow?

This means that on top of the cost of replacing stolen guns, the victims also have to mount a legal defense that amounts to little more than a witch hunt.

Cattlemen have every reason to oppose this bill. Hell, humans, in general, have every reason to oppose this bill.

That doesn’t mean Oregon won’t pass it, though. I’d be surprised if it doesn’t. It’s not like Oregon will consider the needs of rural communities, not with large urban enclaves making up so much of the electorate. The state wants gun control, and who cares what some hicks in the boonies think.

That’s the mentality we’ve seen in so many states. Legislators are so wrapped up in their little bubble of a city that they can’t imagine anyone not having exactly what they have. If they don’t, it’s a case of the rural communities’ backward nature and not a reflection of the fact that they have few resources with which to direct toward things like law enforcement.

A city police officer has a few square miles to patrol. A rural one can have a few hundred square miles to patrol. Through it all, urban voters think the rural communities should hire more police, despite strained budgets.

They live in their own little world, and there are enough of them in some states that they dictate policy.

Here’s hoping against hope that they’ll listen to the cattlemen.