Lift Every Voice Oregon, a group of Oregon faith leaders, filed a package of initiative petitions with the Secretary of State on Monday hoping to get new gun laws on the November ballot. The group tried to get a ballot initiative banning certain semiautomatic firearms on the ballot in 2018 but were stymied by legal challenges.
The new initiative effort applies to certain semiautomatic firearms. If passed, it would raise the minimum age to purchase those firearms to 21, tighten background check requirements, institute a five-day waiting period on new purchases and ban magazines over 10 rounds.
“We have to get legislation before this state for people to vote on to say ‘yes, this is not the kind of weaponry we want in our civil society,’” said Reverend Dr. W.J. Mark Knutson, the chair of Lift Every Voice Oregon and pastor at Portland’s Augustana Lutheran Church.
The group next has to collect 1,000 signatures in order to send the initiative petition to the state Attorney General and Supreme Court for the ballot title and definition. Assuming the petition title is approved, proponents would then need to collect more than 112,000 signatures to put the initiative before voters next fall.