The shooting at the Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Ore., that left four dead on Thursday came fewer than three weeks before votes are tallied in Oregon’s razor-thin governor’s race, and guns were already an issue.
In the closing days, the volume will inevitably rise.
More than half of adults in Oregon live in a household with a gun, according to various surveys, placing the state in the top 15 nationwide. The Democratic state has also enacted some of the strictest gun laws in the country, through a ballot measure narrowly passed in 2022 that would ban high-capacity magazines and require stricter background checks and permitting.
But that initiative has been on hold awaiting a ruling by the Oregon Supreme Court on its constitutionality that could come any day.
Meantime, the race between Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat seeking a second term, and State Senator Christine Drazan, a Republican who lost in 2022 to Ms. Kotek, is on edge.
“There will be time for answering all the questions we have and search for more ways to prevent this kind of violence from happening,” Ms. Kotek said in a statement in response to the school shooting. “But for now, let us hold each other close in our grief.”
Ms. Drazan said, “We have to commit to protecting our kids. We have to put a complete stop to shootings at our schools. This has to end.”
With Democrats in control of both the governor’s office and the Legislature in recent years, Oregon lawmakers and voters have approved gun restrictions, such as a ban on bump stocks and other weapon modifications aimed at increasing a gun’s rate of fire.
But last year, Ms. Drazan, then the House Republican leader, touted her role in killing a bill that would have created a state licensing program for gun dealers, calling it “an extreme bill that would have harmed small businesses in rural communities, low-income communities and communities of color the most.”
Campaign literature supporting Ms. Drazan in the Republican primary praised her for foiling efforts to enact minimum age for gun dealers and attempts to prohibit large capacity magazines: “When liberals tried to kill our Rights, Republican Christine Drazan didn’t miss her shot to defend us.”
Gun rights groups have already noted that initial reports indicate the shooter used a pump-action shotgun, which would have not been covered by the 2022 ballot measure.
“The anti-gun left needs to immediately stop using tragedy to perpetrate their lies and misinformation,” the Gun Owners of America posted on X.
Gun control groups, in the shooting’s wake, have objected to any portrayal of Oregon as a gun safety state. Everytown, a national gun safety advocacy group, ranked Oregon as 12th out of 50 in the strength of its gun laws, but that was based on the ballot measure that is in limbo, said Amie Wexler, executive director of Alliance for a Safe Oregon. She said California and Washington have much stronger laws.
“We are sort of the bad neighbor on the West Coast,” she said. “We’re the weakest of the three states.”
Meantime, neighboring Idaho is one of the most gun-friendly states in the nation. Its voters on Nov. 3 will decide in a referendum which firearm they want to be the state’s gun.
Orlando Mayorquín contributed reporting
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