Oregon's Terrible No Good Very Bad Midterms

Robert sits down with journalist and author Sarah Jeong to discuss Oregon's war on the homeless and looming mid terms.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Uh, it could happen. Here is a podcast that you're
listening to right now. If this is a surprise to you,
if you if you thought this was the Joe Rogan experience,
let me assure you everyone here does eat a diet
of nothing but elk meat. Uh. And to talk to
me about the health value of elk meat uh is

(00:30):
um no? Uh so about I don't know. A week
or so ago. UM, we're talking with Sarah Young. Sarah,
how are you doing good? How are you? I'm I'm
pretty good. Sarah. You're a deputy features editor at The Verge.
You are a lawyer and a journalist, so you have
embraced the two most cursed vocations in two um and

(00:54):
you you've number one most recently written an incredible piece
UM about the Portland and abductions, which is like brutal
and um, very important for the Verge. People ought to
check it out. It is Uh. I don't know. I've
had trouble getting through all of it because it is
very good and because I was there. But everyone needs

(01:17):
to read it. It's an important piece. We're not talking
about that today. We're talking about a post that you
made on the Twitter dot com about a week or
so ago that I I messaged you about wanting to
to chat about you want to kind of talk about
what that post was and what you were trying to
get across. Yeah, the audience. So, if you live in
Portland right now, it's, um, it's absolutely fucking rancid. Like

(01:42):
I think the discourse well sometimes sometimes a city, but
the discourse is rancid. Uh. It's like this in a
lot of other cities as well. Um, but is like
the discourse around homeless people, right, yeah, Yeah, every every
conversation you have with any random person, it's like eventually

(02:04):
goes to oh, it's gotten so bad here lately, and
it's always about homeless people. Um, and they it always
goes to this place where they're like, oh, we should
start rounding people up into camps and getting rid of them.
And it's like people are a little too excited for
literally murder homeless people. You get just saying the most

(02:25):
insane things like oh, I'm not going to break my
car if I see one of those homeless people. It's
it's awful and like, yeah, it's really really awful and
like and then you get people going like, oh, well,
you know how things are and like pulling out murders
that have happened in like New York, um of Asian

(02:47):
women at me to like justify why it is that
I need to start supporting the cops and so on
and so forth. Um, And it's just there's this thing
where I think that they're well meaning leftists really want
to sort of pull out like let's humanize almost people,

(03:10):
which like, yes, but the people you're talking to they
don't deal with empathy actually, right, they already don't see
most of the population as people. So what you're doing
is you're not even speaking the language that they speak.
The issue for me is that what they're what people
are doing when they dehumanize the homeless or like turn

(03:31):
them into like a problem that you can just sweep
away or like kill or put in danger or drop
into a camp where they're more likely to die or
get sick or be harmed. Um, it's it's that you're
making a vast class of people based on like superficial characteristics. Right, Um,

(03:54):
they might be dirty, they're intense. Whatever you felt threatened
by one of them once, So now everyone who's ever
been homeless deserves to have a worse off life because
you didn't feel great about it this one time and
or two times, and it's it's really absurd to me

(04:16):
because like, yeah, I I've had many instances in my
life where I haven't felt very safe, um, because of
someone who was homeless, because of someone who was an addict.
I mean, I'm a small Asian woman. I take public transit.
It is, the vibes are off in every fucking city
right now for people who look like me. Um, But

(04:37):
that doesn't mean that everyone who looks like the person
who's making me uncomfortable deserves to be swept up into
a fucking camp. And in fact, like if I like,
roll the tape back and look at sort of, oh,
let's look at people who have made me feel threatened,
afraid whatever. I've gone through big old sprints in my

(05:00):
life where I'm getting a lot of death threats from
white supremacists. I mean, I'm sure you've life too. I
can see I see it, But like you, I don't
know because you're a woman writing on the internet, Like
you'll get more in a couple of months than I
do in an average like year. I mean it depends, right,
Like it depends. I was just looking at your mentions yeah,

(05:24):
I don't know. I don't really look to carefully, so
I don't even know what the numbers are. Like this is.
I did have an incredible, like six month period where
it was really intense because Tucker Carlson was like putting
me on his show for a while, so it was
it was really bad, like people like some guy called

(05:45):
into my office and threatened to fire bomb it, and
the people who got the phone call like, we're stressed
out enough that they called the cops and there's like
a police report and like, um, there was a bunch
of stuff that happened during this period that was pretty
scary and uh. And it was always like guys who
all sort of looks the same, right, It's like all

(06:07):
the you know, the Oakley sunglasses, like taking a selfie
of themselves in the car, like that sort of stereotype, right,
And you know, I gotta say, for a while, i'd
see that like that little profile picture, I'd see someone
in person and like my heart would start beating faster. Right.
Took a while for me to like be able to

(06:29):
dial that back. Um, during that six month period, I'd
hear someone yell a racial slur, and I would almost
have a panic attack because I fem like, oh no,
like like someone's gonna come and make good on these threats,
and I don't, like, I don't want to round people

(06:50):
up into camps for looking like a shitty, racist, suburbanite
white cut Like it's like it's the because I'm not
a fucking Nazi. Like it's like it doesn't matter what
you've experienced. You're like, what legitimate harm you faced from
people who look a certain way, Like you don't round

(07:13):
them up into camps or like talk about like how
you're not going to break on the straw on the street.
I'm glad I was happy for kind of your perspective
on the matter, because I do try. Like whenever people
talk about how scary Portlands are, how scary the homeless
camps are, Like, the thing I want to say is like,
like I have like five or six different running routes

(07:33):
in the city, and most of them have homeless encampments
on them, and I run through them at night. I
went through them at the day, never had a problem. Um,
you know, sometimes there's like trash, and I would like
it if it were cleaner, but also primarily the people
cleaning up are usually like autonomously organized groups of formerly
houseless folks, which is the thing that happens in a
couple of the neighborhoods that I go to, um and like.

(07:56):
But at the same time, I don't want to bring
that in when there's an argument about it, because like,
I'm a six ft three pound white guy, right, Like,
of course I'm as a general rule in a lot
of situations, I don't feel worried what other people do
because I'm a big white dude and that's UM. But
what I will say, I had an experience a couple
of months back. A person that I live near, like

(08:18):
a neighbor of mine, is a young woman within like
a six month old infant, and she was out jogging
on one of the trails near our house, and two
guys uh in new Kawasaki like motorcycles, dirt bikes, whatever
you want to call them. I assume rich kids because
these were very new bikes drove up and shot at

(08:40):
her and her baby with baby guns. Hit her in
the face, nearly hit her baby. Um, And it was
like homeless folks and people at an illegal skate park
who came to her aid and like made sure she
was okay, and when I got out there, because I
I rolled out there with a fucking beat stick and
a handgun just to be like, if I see these motherfucker's,

(09:01):
we're gonna have words. And I started talking to homeless
folks that I knew on the route who were all like, yeah,
those people like they come by to shoot at us,
and it's and I have heard this in multiple encampments.
I've heard this at Laurel Nurst a number of places
that like kids from the suburbs will come in to
shoot homeless people with baby guns and mace them, and um,
I have I'm not gonna say again. I've also been

(09:23):
in a situation where like an agitated, houseless woman was
like swinging a machette at some folks, and you know,
everything was de escalated. But like, I get it. The
fact that there are people out there who are having
like mental health difficulty means that people are going to
have encounters that can be frightening. Um. But by and large,
the people that I find myself most threatened by are

(09:44):
like kids, people like those assholes rolling by and shooting
people with baby guns, and of course folks driving gigantic
trucks in tiny streets like assholes often while wasted. Um,
Like those are the things that scare me in Portland,
not the encampments. Yeah, and honestly, like there there are
some increasing safety issues in Portland, but like a lot

(10:07):
of it is also just like from cars, right, Like
it is a it's more there's more of a car
culture than there used to be. Um. And people get
hit and uh, they go to the hospital or they die,
like it's it. There's like they're they're big changes in
the city for sure, but like it's there's so much
focus on homelessness as being like the root of all

(10:29):
of that, and like, I don't know, they'll say, oh,
Portland has gotten so bad and the same breath as
like talking about how high rents are or like how
expensive houses have gotten just not even connecting those two things, right,
Like why is it that housing is so expensive now?
Like clearly people are placing bets on real estate either

(10:51):
that or just we haven't built out enough. Could that
be something? Um? Or maybe things aren't as bad as
you think, and it's it's a desirable place to live.
Um it's really like it is. It's extremely frustrating. Um.
I I also think that there's this weird thing where

(11:12):
you just don't really think about the fact that you
might have one or two encounters where it's upsetting you
feel scared, and then like the vast majority of people
who are unhoused are just trying to stay the funk
out of your way, right and like there you're not
going to see them, you're not going to talk to

(11:34):
them unless you go out of your way to talk
to them and reach out, and like they're probably scared
of you because they don't know who you are, Like
you're a stranger. You might be one of those assholes
on Kawasaki's like out to to shoot you, out to
shoot them, and like it's it's really frustrating, like it's halfway.

(11:55):
I don't know. Some some of the people who buy
into this kind of discourse are just outright terrible human beings, right, Yeah,
they're just they're just fashions, they're just they're just fast.
This is useful. But then there's like it's really frustrating
how many people in the city right now are just
useful idiots for the fascists have just like gone down
that gone down that rabbit hole and aren't thinking past

(12:19):
like what it means to quote unquote take care of
the homeless problem, Like what do you what do you
want to do here? What do you actually want to do?
Where are these people going to go? Like what's going
to happen to them? And it's it's super frustrating. We're

(12:48):
focusing on Portland because it's where we live, but all
of these things are evidence of like broader trends. You
can see a lot of the same tactics being used
in Los Angeles and Austin um in Minneapolis. And one
of the things is kind of this conflation of like disorder,
drug use, homelessness with like deadly violence and a number

(13:09):
of things, like we've talked about kind of jailing and
putting into camps the homeless is is one thing people
suggest There's also a lot of like suggestions around massively
increasing the number of police. And this all also goes
into you know, you've got this kind of series of
of right wing uh cups against elected leaders who have

(13:31):
any kind of other suggestions. We saw this in San
Francisco with the DHS abode and the police like just
refusing to enforce like the law when they were when
CESSA was attempting to carry things out in a different way.
And like what we're seeing in Portland right now, We've
got um, a city Commissioner, Joan Hardesty, who uh number

(13:52):
one is the only black woman in the city council. UM,
the only person on the city council who rents, uh
and the only person in the city council who was
in debt and who is endured. And I'm not gonna
say she's a perfect counselor a perfect politician. There's plenty
of things to criticize Hardesty over UM, but there has been,
like number one, this kind of unhinged campaign of attacking

(14:14):
her because of the fact that, like her financial situation
isn't great, which I see actually as a plus UM,
because a lot of people in Portland are in rough
financial condition. Maybe it's nice if they're represented on the
fucking city council. But also she's instituted as people keep
fetching about, you know, violence and gun violence, which are
problems that have gotten worse in Portland. Although it is

(14:35):
important to note Portland is one of the safest cities
in the entire United States, even after the quote unquote
surge and violent crime. I don't think that mitigates that.
I just think it's important to keep like things in perspective.
But hardesty has instituted the only effective program that has
reduced gun violence in the city of Portland in the
recent past, which was essentially a series of traffic calming measures, right, Like,

(14:58):
I think that's probably a fair to say it. It It
was sort of altering the way in which um traffic
worked in a neighborhood to kind of try and reduce
some of the situations that were like leading to violence.
And um, she's undergoing this massive attack right now by
a candidate, a right wing candidate. I mean, he, like

(15:20):
everyone who runs importantly, he claims to be a Democrat. Um,
he's donated to Republicans. He is called named Renee Gonzalez,
who's being backed by a lot of the same business
interests that are pushing this anti homeless agenda, pushing the
mayor's proposal to put homeless people in encampments. And UM,
I don't know, it's just I feel like I can

(15:41):
see it all coming together, and that I hate how
many people are, as you said, kind of useful idiots
about it, where they're like, you know, look it, clearly
these people who are talking about rehabilitation or who are
trying to, like, actually, who are not suggesting a car
serrale solution to the fact that it's unpleasant to see
people suffering on the street. Um are wrong because look

(16:04):
at what the news tells me about how much worse
violence has gotten and stuff like, I it's very frustrating.
Don't vote for reagans hoas but yeah, please please don't
vote for a man who donated to a Republican pack
six months after January six Let's please please, let's not
do that. But god, it's it's I think, like really

(16:29):
sad that. I mean, like people I think really just
don't want to think about how damaged all of society
is right now. Yeah, Like wait, like we lived through
you know, currently had one of the worst responses to COVID. Uh.
Millions of people are dead. Um, our mental health is

(16:53):
fucking shot through. Uh, even people who didn't experience sort
of federal jack boots on the ground. Um, we're not
well right like it it's any number of housed perfectly
like financially stable people turned to substance abuse during this period, UM,

(17:13):
and UH are are still you know, recovering. UM. People
who are unhoused also turned to substance abuse if they
weren't um already there, and their mental health is also
shot there. And uh, sort of the upshot of this
is everyone is fucking sick and taking it out on

(17:34):
each other and it really sucks to see. It really
sucks to see people be their worst selves reasingly and increasingly. Yeah,
and I first off, I want to try to provide
people with some objective numbers. And this is just on
the city of Portland. So Portland number one never defunded
its police. There are police currently get the most money

(17:56):
they've ever gotten. Um. But we do have one thing
it is accurate to say is we have fewer police
per capita than any major city in the United States,
and we have the fewest number of police on the
force in living memory. I'm fairly certain right now there's
like seven hundred Portland police officers, which is significantly down
from because it's not a pleasant job, because people hate

(18:19):
the cops here in Portland, so they keep quitting and
moving to other cities. Um. And it is true that
when the pandemic hit, violent crime in Portland raised by
about two hundred and seven percent from January nine through June,
which is the largest increase compared to five comparable cities.
This is from an article in the Oregon Capital Chronicle, Minneapolis, Atlanta,

(18:40):
San Francisco, Denver, and Nashville. UM. However, it's also worth
noting that over the course of the last year, we're
at seven a fewer homicides than we were the year before. UM. Overall,
the number of homicides in two has fallen two percent
from one, even as we continue to have fewer and

(19:00):
fewer police, almost as if the Surgeon violent crime was
not a result in policing, but as you said, the
result of a lot of other factors around the pandemic
and around the economic situation, and like the rate of
violence has been continuing to decrease. It's also worth noting
that while we're talking about homicides here and Portland did

(19:21):
see a surgeon homicides during the pandemic, that's not the
only kind of crime or the only kind of violent crime. UM.
And I want to quote here from Travel Oregon. In
February one, the Major Cities Chiefs Association issue to report
noting that sixty three of sixty six major cities saw
at least one violent crime category grow in Among cities
of comparable size, Portland generally experiences violent crime at somewhat

(19:43):
lower rates. Like the A lot of this is media driven,
and it's specifically the thing that you highlighted in the
post that that made me reach out to you was
was talking about how particularly white suburbanite homeowners are driving
this panic and are driving these kind of surge and
very like fascist solutions to the fears that they have

(20:05):
about homelessness and about crime. And one of the reasons
why this ship works is is people don't go into
the city. They live in the suburbs. They see the
scary news. And that's the thing I don't know how
to actually combat because it is a nationwide problem. Shootings
and deaths due to shootings. They have increased since the pandemic,
but if you look at them on like a twenty
year graph, fairly flat nationwide. Um, but what has got right,

(20:31):
like nobody statistics of gun crimes like what in like
the last couple of years, And then now they're saying
that gun violence has increased, like it's it's yeah, yeah, anyway,
what had What we know what has increased vastly more
than gun crime is reporting on gun crime, which has surged.
It like and and that's because you know, if it bleeds,

(20:52):
it leads in whatever. But it is this thing of
like that's the stuff that gets people to pay attention,
and it's the stuff that spreads on social media, just
like pictures of like poop on the streets of San
Francisco can spread on social media, and it it all
exists to keep these kind of suburban voters at a
constant state of agitation, which makes them easy to manipulate.
And like that's the thing that scares me the most. Yeah,

(21:15):
I mean things are almost shittier with Portland because well, like, okay,
the same Nisco poop situation, So how you live in
the Bay area, that was a real situation. Francis is
just human there's just human ship everywhere. Um, it's you know,
you you live with it. It's it just is what
it is. And you know someone's from New York when

(21:36):
they start complaining about it, right, like, it's uh and
it I think New York which smells like p everywhere,
but I mean it's it's most like hot garbage because
they don't they don't take their garbage. They like just
put their garbage out on the curb. And when it's summertime.
It just smells fucking terrible. Um But uh so everyone's

(21:56):
got their problems, but it's it's this weird thing we're
just because of the way that we're drawn up geographically.
We've got all of these people like like you said,
like out in the burbs who vote, who have control
over the way the wind blows, who just never come
out here. Ever in this they never come out here,

(22:17):
and uh in San Francisco, Like yeah, they've got outlying
areas as well, But it's it's not drawn up exactly
the way that we are quite right, Like like the
people who are going to be the most alarmist about
San Francisco are like not going to be in the
area where they're voting about the things that happened to

(22:40):
San Francisco, the way the Chasis stuff went down, Like
I mean, that's complicated, right, Like I mean it was
it was a witch hunt and it made me really
in Srancis and made me really want to never move back.
But it it was like we've we've just got a

(23:03):
different sort of set up here where the people who
are the most upset about all of the crime in Portland,
like they don't come out to where they think the
crime is happening at all, Like they like they just
don't really interact with the city. They're off somewhere else,
and it's it is truly strange, really annoying. Uh yeah,

(23:29):
and it is this is like, I don't know, this
is part of why, this is part of why politically
I tend to align myself with like libertarian municipalism. Um.
I think one of the problems we have is that
places that have very little to do with each other
get to pass laws that impact how people live in

(23:49):
those those places, Like which is a problem, um as
we all just got overseeing with fucking Donald Trump, right,
Like that's a that's a version of the problem in
a version of another version of the problem is that
like people in Los Angeles can pass a gas tax
that makes total sense for cities in California, but fox
Over people who live in the middle of nowhere. Um,
and all of these things are like, I don't know,

(24:13):
it's the you get the it's two simultaneous issues. Like
one of them is you've got these liberals in Portland,
who the rest of the state resents for dominating politics
in the entire state, even in areas that are very
little to do with like western Oregon. And then you

(24:33):
have these these outlying like you have these folks who
don't live in Portland who you know, are pushing for
like you know, who are responsible with the fact that
we might get a Republican governor in the state right,
who are reacting to like what they hear about Portland
even though it's not accurate. And I don't know, I
I this is we're getting past like what people can

(24:53):
do in terms of like voting on local elections. But
I wish we had a system in which, like folks
weren't constantly pitted against each other in this way, because
I don't think it's very productive. Well, we're chopped up
in a really by the way I vote to Charter reform, etcetera.
If you're living in Portland. Uh, like we've we've got

(25:14):
some some other other things going on with our our
city government that makes things additionally weird and um suboptimal.

(25:35):
There's a bunch of things that I'm kind of dreading
in the near future or from the midterm elections, including
you know Renee Gonzalez. Um. You know, I I have
strong feelings on the proposed gun control measure but um,
I'm broadly optimistic about charter reform. That actually seems like
something good that we're likely to do. Yeah. Um yeah,

(25:55):
let's talk about that a little bit, because Portland would
be the first city in the United States to reform
its city council along these lines, if I'm not mistaken,
Along which lines like the way the chry to reform
is like set up. Um. So basically Portland's currently has
a commission form of government in which we have a
very powerful mayor and for city council people who are

(26:20):
handed portfolios by the mayor and they basically run the
city government. Um. Which is it's a pretty dysfunctional system. Um.
It leads to a a small number of people running
very large bureaucracies that they usually don't know how to handle,
which is one of the reasons why the city is
so dysfunctional. In addition to the fact that our Mayor

(26:43):
Ted Wheeler is uh politely speaking dogshit. Under the new
form of government that's that's being voted on right now,
the Charter, the commission structure will be jettisoned. City council
members will not directly manage bureaus. Instead, they'll pass laws
and meet with constituents. The mayor will no longer be
part of the city council. Instead, he'll lead the executive branch.

(27:07):
I'm not wild about the amount of power that the
mayor will still have, UM, but I think broadly speaking, uh,
it's it's a much better system and there will be
like a larger group of people involved in actually like
managing the city's affairs. UM. I don't know what we
have currently certainly is not particularly effective. Um. And I

(27:32):
would like to see a more democratic system put into place. Yeah,
and like obscenely outdated, right, it's like, Yeah, I don't
know who else does things like Portland currently does. But
the charter reform is greatly needed. Yeah, and it's going

(27:53):
to bring in rank choice voting as well when on yeah,
on their on their like city like which is uh.
Like one of the issues that we've had here is
that like that we're having right now with like the
gubernatorial race is that, Um, you've got three candidates running,
one of whom is kind of positioning themselves as an
independent Betsey Johnson, who does not really have a chance

(28:16):
to win um and seems to be being funded by
people like the Nike guy in order to take voids
away from Tina co Tech who's the Democratic candidate, so
that Christine Drayson, who's the Republican candidate, will be more
likely to win. I don't know, Like, um, I still
don't know how much I believe Drayson actually has a shot.
But the polls show them neck and neck, so are

(28:39):
pretty terrifying. Um, yeah, we're we're kind of like covering
on the cusp of of the governor seat going red
to Yeah, it's yeah, I don't know. Um, yeah, that's
the election that scares me. Like I really I really

(29:00):
don't want to see Renee Gonzala's win. But the if
Charter reform passes, like the the harm that he can
inflict on the city becomes limited, just because right now,
city council seats just have outsized power in a very
dysfunctional way. And uh, it's and that that changes with

(29:25):
Charter reform, like we just get a little bit more
of a normal city. Um. And uh but the state,
the state election though, that is that's pretty scary stuff. Yeah,
the state, especially since if the Democrats stay in power
at the state level, then there's a good chance that

(29:47):
I mean as far as like what people are talking
about then we're going to actually see like Portland's become
or Oregon become a sanctuary for reproductive health. Right, Like,
that's one of the things that's that's on the ballot
it um, So if you uh, like, if you care
about that, that's kind of the whole game, right Like,

(30:09):
regardless of the fact that co Tech has a history
with our current governor that's not entirely positive. Our current
Democratic governor has been a ship governor and handled the
pandemic terribly. Like, at the end of the day, it's
it kind of has to be all about um uh,
all about reproductive health, right because like the Republicans would

(30:30):
not have handled the pandemic any better, um, but they
will also support a crackdown against people having access to abortion.
We also have the craziest Republicans out here like it,
And I mean part of that is the areas are
representing or whatever, but part of it is also just
we've been under Democratic control for so long that like

(30:52):
the minority party gets weirder and weirder and weirder. Like
we've got we've got the guys who like what ran
away from the legislative session rather then vote on a
climate change bill. Alright, like it's it's not it's not good.
It's really bad. Like handing ending them the keys of
the kingdom is a terrible move. Yeah. I don't know

(31:13):
what else to say. Uh, you get anything else to say?
As we as we head into the midterm elections here
in Oregon, I felt like, I don't know, this is
broadly speaking, I really want to hear about your your
your feelings on that gun control measure. Yeah. So we've
got Measure one fourteen coming up, which is um gun control.

(31:35):
So for people who don't know, and this may surprise folks,
even how blue it is, Oregon basically does not have
any kind of like gun control laws. Um. This is
a this is a state in which any kind of
gun that's legal to own in the United States and
any kind of magazine you can own in the state
of Oregon. Um. We are a shall issue state, which
means if you are a law abiding citizen and you

(31:57):
apply for concealed carry permit, they have to give it
to you. Um. Gun owners have quite a few protections
at present. Uh. The first major there was a gun
control law passed in most reasonable gun owners had no
issue with it because all it did was say you
have to get a background check to you. So there's
this thing called face to face sales, whereby in a

(32:18):
lot of states like Texas, you can just hand somebody
a gun for cash as long as you're not a
professional gun dealer. That's that's legal, and that's that's bad. Generally.
It's how a lot of guns get across the border.
That was removed as a legal possibility in Oregon back
in But other than that, we haven't had a whole
lot of gun control UM. In the wake of the
Vivaldi shooting. A an organization I think Lift Every Voice

(32:40):
is what they're called, led by some church leaders, pushed
for what a ballot measure. So this is not something
where and I do think this is interesting, there is
not a situation where Democratic politicians in the state of
Oregon are trying to pass gun control. This is a
situation in which a ballot measure was proposed and enough
people voted that the entire state is voting on whether

(33:02):
or not h to have gun control UM, which, regardless
of my opinions on the measure itself, I think is
a better way for stuff like this to work than
a bunch of legislators just like making a law. But anyway,
the measure itself is, in my opinion, deeply flawed in
the way that it's written. It does a couple of things.
For one thing, it requires that every person who buy

(33:23):
a gun pass a background check, which is already the
law that's in the bill, and it shouldn't be because
it's already the law. I think. One of the things
that reasons I think that's dishonest is because it always
gets summarized and like, this is what the bill will do.
It will require that everybody pass a background ship. Well,
they're all They're already required. It does not actually do
anything there. Um. It adds in a magazine capacity restrictions,

(33:45):
and you won't be able to buy or take out
in public magazines that have a higher capacity than ten rounds.
We can talk about that in a second. And then
the primary thing it does is it requires people pass
a series of tests in order to purchase firearms, and
the people who will be a ministering those tests and
running the whole program are the police. So the police

(34:07):
essentially get control over who gets to own firearms. UM.
I do consider that that is particularly the thing that
I find problematic. Um. For one, thing. Regardless of your
opinions on gun control. The right to bear arms is
similar to the right to freedom of speech and guaranteed
in the same way, and so the fact that the

(34:27):
police are being made the arbiters of who gets to
exercise that right is deeply problematic to me. UM. I
think given what we know about how often police in
Oregon work with far right groups, work with organizations like
the Proud Boys, UM, it is very likely that we
will see uneven enforcement and uneven um. Uh like the

(34:51):
police granting the ability to bear arms very unevenly, which
concerns me greatly. We had a mass shooting earlier this
year at a protest in cha right winger killed a woman, UH,
sixty one year old woman and injured five other people.
That person was stopped by a left wing demonstrator with
an a R fifteen style rifle. UM. What was actually

(35:11):
technically a handgun, but that's anyway whatever, it was an
a R fifteen style weapon. UM. I'm concerned that under
this new law, the right winger would have still had
the ability to acquire firearms, but the person who stopped
and would not. UM. So that's why I have an
issue with it. I also think if you're going to
I'm not. I don't personally advocate magazine capacity restrictions, but

(35:33):
also I don't speak out against them. Washington recently passed
a law restricting magazine capacity. I didn't say anything about that.
I think maybe I I think if it like, if
it works, I will be happy. Um. I think the
way the Washington law was written was a lot more
sensible than the Oregon law because it was written in
such a way that it stops the additional sale of

(35:57):
expand of standard capacity magazines of thirty on magazines and
higher without giving the police an opportunity to harass and
arrest people over what they own, um, which I think
is important. The way the law is written, if you had,
like whatever you had prior to the band taking effect,
you can keep and continue to use as normal. Um,

(36:18):
just no more it can be sold. And so the
thing that the thing you're trying to stop with a
magazine capacity band at this point is someone doing what
the Vivaldi shooter did, right, where a kid goes out
and buys a weapon and a bunch of thirty round
magazines and then goes on a mass shooting. Right, you
want them to not be able to go and immediately
acquire those magazines. Um it is. I think by making
it illegal to take them out in the world if

(36:40):
you already own them, what you're doing is giving police
pretext to stop and search people, um to like search
people going out and shooting in the woods like folks
do in Oregon, um, without having an impact on mass
shooters because they're not going to care about violating that
particular law. If you want to stop more of those
things from being old, I think a law written the

(37:01):
way the Washington law is written does the maximum in
order to restrict people from purchasing the thing you don't
want them to purchase, without giving police the ability to
like harass and arrest people. Um. Anyway, That's that's my
thinking of one fourteen. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's that's

(37:21):
like an important as an important series of distinctions to
get out there. Yeah, um anyway, I I I voted
against it. I try, really, I actually do try, despite
my opinions not to talk about gun control too much
on this show. But like that's my my thinking on
the matter. Folks can do whatever they want. Will know

(37:41):
when on January or November eight how they voted. Yeah,
I mean like, it's hardly the most disturbing things on
the balet right now. Yeah, no, no, no, And I
am like like I there's there's so much going on
right now, and it's one of those things. I guess

(38:02):
we'll all learn in the near future, Like we're gonna
learn a lot from this election in Oregon, Like if
Hardesty stays on, if we get charter reform, and if
co Tech wins, then kind of regardless of what happens
with one fourteen, I will be broadly optimistic heading into
because it will show that the campaign of fear didn't

(38:24):
work entirely. Yeah. Um, and if Gonzales and and drays
and win and Chatter Reform gets defeated, I will be
really pessimistic heading in. Yeah. Yeah, if if drays and wins,
like that's yeah, it's ah yeah, it's it's bad. It's

(38:46):
really bad. It's bad news for a lot of fucking reasons.
Um yeah, I mean row, that's huge. Um yeah, but yeah,
like it's the sky is the limit for a state
that has been under democratic control for this long, right,

(39:06):
Like it's it's they've just gotten so complacent, is all
I can think. Um. Oh, I mean the spoiler candidate.
Obviously that that did change a lot. Um, but it's
the complacency was is alarming. Yeah, um, well, is there

(39:27):
anything else you wanted to say about what we're heading into? Well,
I mean, don't let your fear control you. Um, don't
be a useful idiot for Nazis, and uh, don't put
people into camps. I guess yeah, that's that's my thinking.

(39:48):
Don't like, if somebody is trying to make you scared
about a group of people who are the most powerless
people in your community, you might want to assume that
the per in doing that as trying to take advantage
of you. Um, that's that's That's kind of where I
land on this sort of stuff. Um, yeah, don't put

(40:08):
people into camps. We really shouldn't have to say that anymore,
but yeah, we should have to tell people to not
be Patrick Bateman from fucking American right, Like it's like
we should people should like but no, it's yeah, we've
we should not be regressing this hard in terms of
our moral compasses. But that's where we are. That's where

(40:30):
we are. Well, do you want to plug your plug
double Sarah? Yeah? So, uh, Rebert mentioned that I just
put out a big feature about the Portland van abductions
published on the Verge. Um. It's part of a longer series,
uh that we did this year about the Department of
Homeland Security, which is twenty years old this year. UM,

(40:53):
so we did a bunch of features, some about Puerto
Rico and FEMA, UH, some about Essay. Of course I
did a short little thing about how Chad Wolfe was
illegally ahead of the DHS for a hot minute. Um.
And so there's some fun stuff in there. Um. We've
still got another feature that will go up by the
end of this year. I think your your listeners would

(41:16):
enjoy going through some of those excellent all right, Well,
that has been the episode. This has been It could
happen here, um by it could happen here as a
production of cool Zone Media. Well more podcasts from cool
Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com,

(41:38):
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
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cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.