Legislators haven’t raised new gun initiatives

Published 4:51 am Wednesday, October 14, 2015

SALEM — The mass shooting at Umpqua Community College renewed debate over gun control and on Oct. 8, Senate Democrats announced plans to close loopholes in the federal background check system and crack down on straw purchasing.

But in Oregon, lawmakers have yet to propose any new measures aimed at preventing gun violence.

“I think people are just coming out of shock right now, and we did a big push for the background checks in the 2015 session,” said state Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick, D-Portland. “I just need to have some conversations with people … my caucus members and people on the other side of the aisle, to see if there’s a pathway for something to happen in 2016. It’s a short session. It’s not meant to be a major policy issue session.”

The Legislature has already closed some of the background check loopholes that remain at the federal level. Earlier this year, legislators passed a law that requires background checks for nearly all private firearm transfers. The state also began last year investigating people who failed background checks when they attempted to buy weapons at gun shows and licensed dealers. That policy change came at the request of Senate Minority Leader Sen. Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, after Ferrioli learned the Oregon State Police had not been investigating the incidents.

It is illegal in Oregon for someone prohibited from purchasing a firearm to attempt to purchase one.

Some of the state’s efforts to prevent shootings, or improve the response, are still unfolding.

The day before the Umpqua Community College shooting, Oregon State Police Superintendent Richard Evans gave an update to state lawmakers on what Evans said was “my passion, school safety.”

Evans is part of a 14-member state task force on school safety, which lawmakers created in 2014 in response to the December 2012 shootings at Clackamas Town Center and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

A couple months after the bill to create the task force became law, there was another shooting in Oregon, at Reynolds High School in Troutdale.

Evans told lawmakers on Sept. 30 the top priority for the task force is to create a tip line where people can report threats of school shootings, plus a broad range of other issues including bullying, potential suicides and abuse.

“What we’ve learned in our research is 81 percent of the time, somebody else knew that that school shooting was going to occur,” Evans said. “And what we’re finding is that there’s no way, really, in Oregon to report that.”

Oregon created a tip line in 1998 after the shooting at Thurston High School in Springfield, but Evans said the tip line — which was housed at the Oregon Department of Justice — was eliminated due to budget cuts.

The new tip line might be similar to a Colorado system that allows people to report concerns online, over the phone and via text. A tip line would provide a single place for people to report concerns.

Evans said a recent email to state police provided an example of the type of concern that could be handled in a more centralized manner at a tip line. State police received an email about a post on an online forum, where someone wrote that he or she had attended a Christian school, was bullied, and wrote that “I’m gonna go get them and I have weapons.” State police were able to track down the author of the post the same day. “That person was a felon, in possession of firearms, and had the ability to carry out the threat,” Evans said.

The Colorado tip line has received approximately 380 warnings of possible attacks on schools since it launched in 2004, Evans said. The school safety task force is also working on initiatives to create a secure database with maps of schools around the state that law enforcement and other first responders can access if there is an active shooter or other incident, and a statewide system to identify and respond to students who threaten to commit violence against others. The threat assessment system could be based on a Marion County program that Evans described as a national model.

One impediment to launch the tip line could be a lack of money, and state Rep. Jeff Barker, D-Aloha, said this week that if necessary, he will propose legislation next year to pay for it. Barker, a retired Portland police lieutenant and member of the school safety task force, said a tip line might help law enforcement “head off a lot of things.”

“I’m trying to get this thing resolved before we get another disaster,” Barker said.