AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli

Oregon’s Senate Bill 501, the bill that would restrict round capacity to just five rounds and limit ammo purchases to 20 rounds per month, looks to be dead. I suspect it’s a mercy killing, thankfully. Yet it seems Oregon isn’t done with its anti-gun shenanigans.

Oh no, its got more on tap.

On Tuesday morning, lawmakers in Salem will hold the first hearing on a controversial gun control bill.

Senate Bill 978 seeks to make sweeping changes to current regulations. The proposals include requiring safe gun storage, allowing retailers to set higher minimum purchasing age restrictions and placing liability on gun owners if their gun is stolen and used in a crime. The bill outlaws untraceable and undetectable firearms, grants local authorities the power to regulate firearm access in public buildings and asks hospitals to provide firearm injury data to the state.

The 44-page bill was released late last week.

The bill looks to make changes to gun storage, requiring owners to keep guns locked and in a secure container or safe in the home.

Gun control advocates say this move reduces the likelihood of a gun being used improperly.

“To make sure that people who are accessing firearms are going to be the people who are, should be accessing firearms,” Ceasfire Oregon Executive Director Penny Okamoto said, “and not people who are prohibited from accessing firearms.”

On the other hand, gun rights advocates say it limits their ability to defend themselves.

Look, I’ve repeated time and time that people need to lock their guns up.

But when you mandate people do so, you’re not taking their individual needs or experiences into account. For example, a person who rarely leaves home and has no kids has far less reason to lock up his firearms than a working parent of five kids. The law doesn’t account for any of that. It doesn’t care about individual circumstances.

When the law requires guns to be locked up, it means they’re not necessarily available when someone needs them. The last thing you should need to do when you hear the sound of glass breaking at three in the morning is fumbling with a lock. You may well not have that kind of time.

Then the bill doubles down and seeks to punish victims.

After all, what else can you call a provision that would penalize people for their guns being misused after they were stolen? Locking a gun up isn’t an automatic preventative for theft, so an individual may have their gun locked up, it still gets stolen, and now the state wants to make them liable?

And this is what passes for “sensible gun control” in the Pacific Northwest? Seriously?

Remember when people started talking about how victim-blaming was bad? That the last thing anyone should do is act like things are the victim’s fault? I sure do, and I remember agreeing with the idea. Well, now we’ve come full circle, and the idea is popular all over again.

Way to go, Oregon.