The Pacific Northwest is one of the parts of the country I most wanted to live in…at least before everyone got ridiculously woke and anti-gun. Now, you couldn’t pay me to live there. A friend of mine recently escaped from Oregon to live in the free state of Texas–and that’s pretty much how she thinks of it, too.

Meanwhile, Oregon has new laws that went into effect a couple of days ago, and here’s what gun owners there need to know:

Here’s what to know about the new law, effective Sept. 25, 2021:

• A firearm is not considered secured if a key or combination to the trigger, cable lock or the container is readily available to a person the owner or possessor has not authorized to carry or control the firearm or a handgun is left unattended in a vehicle and is within view of people outside the vehicle.
• The safe storage requirement doesn’t apply if a gun owner is either alone in their home or with other people allowed to use the gun.

…

• If a person transfers a firearm and a criminal background check is required prior to the transfer, the person is also required to transfer the firearm with a trigger lock or in a locked container.
• A gun dealer must post in a prominent location a notice, in block letters not less than one inch in height, that states, “The purchaser of a firearm has an obligation to store firearms in a safe manner and to prevent unsupervised access to a firearm by a minor. If a minor or unauthorized person obtains access to a firearm and the owner failed to store the firearm in a safe manner, the owner may be in violation of the law.”
• Failing to secure a firearm would result in a maximum fine of $500.
• That fine increases to $2,000 if a minor accesses an unsecured firearm.

(I removed a few points to make sure we’re clear under Fair Use laws. I invite you to go to the above link and read the whole list for yourself.)

I suppose it should be noted that no one should expect there to be any noticeable change in pretty much anything with these laws. All they’ve successfully done is make it more of a pain in the posterior to be a law-abiding gun owner.

Which I suppose is probably the point.

In Oregon, they don’t want you owning guns. They don’t want you having them. They just can’t ban them, so they try to do everything just shy of a ban. Or they’re trying to, anyway.

Oregon still isn’t as bad as many places, to be clear, but they’re working on it. Remember that this is the state that considered restricting firearm capacity to just five rounds. The bill was too extreme even for Oregon, but someone tried it. That’s more than they’ve tried in California, Massachusetts, or New York, just for some perspective.

It’s a good thing it didn’t pass, but the above-stuff did, and I’d hate for someone to end up in a lurch because they simply didn’t know any different.