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MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
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Vale District BLM/Capital Press
Boot camp students learn fire-line tasks.
Women in Wildland Fire
Boot Camp set for SE Oregon
By Brad Carlson
EO Media Group
The U.S. Bureau of Land
Management Vale District
plans its annual Women in
Wildland Fire Boot Camp
over the Oct. 11-13 and
Oct. 18-20 weekends.
Applications are due
Sept. 6. Selection notifica-
tion is scheduled Sept. 13.
Participants who com-
plete the program over
both weekends will be
certified as wildland fire-
fighters. They will be eli-
gible to apply for seasonal
employment or on-call
positions.
Of the 20 participants
who graduated in 2018,
about a dozen got firefight-
ing jobs with land agen-
cies or local departments,
District Dispatch Cen-
ter Manager Cassandra
Andrews-Fleckenstein said.
Vale District BLM last
year started offering the
program, which the USDA
Forest Service has used for
about five years.
“We see a lot of women
in our temporary and low-
er-level positions, but not
a lot are staying in for
management positions as
often,” Andrews-Flecken-
stein said. By increas-
ing the number of women
at lower levels, “hope-
fully some can make it into
higher levels.”
The camp, held in a
remote southeastern Ore-
gon duty station, covers the
basics of wildfire behav-
ior, suppression, strategy,
safety, equipment and tac-
tics as well as incident
management.
Graduates
apply for firefighting jobs
in November and Decem-
ber. Before being officially
hired the following June,
they must walk three miles
in less than 45 minutes
while wearing a 45-pound
pack.
Camp applicants must
be 18 by June 2020.
I n f o r m a t i o n :
Andrews-Fleckenstein
at 541-473-6295 or can-
drews@blm.com
825 SOUTH CANYON BLVD.
IN JOHN DAY
(541) 575-5500
Gun storage advocates file petition
By Claire Withycombe
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM
—
Advo-
cates are reviving efforts to
require Oregon gun owners
to securely store their guns.
Supporters filed an initia-
tive petition Thursday, July
18, to bring the issue to vot-
ers again in November 2020
if the Legislature fails to
pass similar legislation next
year.
The petitioners — Henry
Wessinger and Jenna Passa-
lacqua, both of Portland, and
Paul Kemp, of Happy Val-
ley — want to reduce inju-
ries and deaths associated
with guns that have been
accessed unlawfully, or by
children.
Supporters filed a similar
petition last year, but with-
drew it after it became clear
they didn’t have time to
gather enough signatures in
support to get it on the bal-
lot. They then advocated for
lawmakers to pass a storage
law this year.
But their idea collided
with the legislative session’s
fiery politics.
A major gun control bill,
which included the storage
requirements, was killed as
part of negotiations in May,
when Senate Republicans
refused to attend floor ses-
sions in protest of a new busi-
ness tax.
Gov. Kate Brown bro-
kered a deal where major-
ity Democrats would drop
the gun bill and a second
bill tightening vaccination
requirements for public
school students to get the
Republicans to come back.
And when Senate Repub-
licans walked out for the
second time, spanning more
than a week in late June, time
was lacking to bring back
the storage requirements as a
standalone proposal.
Initiative Petition 40
would require that gun
owners store their guns
with a cable or trigger lock
engaged, or in a secure con-
tainer with a tamper-resis-
tant lock. Specifications
for the container would be
established by the state’s
health agency.
Generally speaking, the
petition’s provisions would
only be felt by gun owners
after it became evident that a
gun wasn’t stored to the spec-
ifications in the measure: For
example, if a child obtained
a gun that was not securely
stored, and got hurt, the gun
owner would be held liable.
Under the measure, a gun
owner would be expected
to report lost or stolen guns
to police within 24 hours of
learning of the loss or theft.
The measure wouldn’t
mean that police would go
proactively into homes to
check that guns are stored
safely.
Henry Wessinger, who
filed the petition in person
Thursday, believes the bill
can pass if it is its own bill in
the short legislative session
next year.
“While we were disap-
pointed that we didn’t get
safe storage passed in 2019,
we’re not discouraged,”
Wessinger said, “Because
we think that we’ve built a
really strong base of support,
and are well positioned for
passing it in the 2020 short
session.”
Oregon lawmakers have a
roughly five-monthlong ses-
sion in odd-numbered years,
and meet for up to 35 days in
even-numbered years.
Safe storage is the House’s
top gun safety priority in
2020, a spokesman for House
Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Port-
land, said in an email to the
Oregon Capital Bureau.
Proposing the ballot ini-
tiative is a sort of insurance
policy — a backup plan in
case lawmakers don’t pass a
safe storage bill in the 2020
session.
In order for the measure
to pass next year, it will
have to gain support from
a majority of representa-
tives and senators in each
chamber.
Democrats hold com-
fortable majorities in each
chamber, but not all of them
have supported stricter gun
laws in the past.
Wessinger believes the
bill can get enough support.
He maintains a good
share of Oregonians support
the proposal, and that it’s not
a partisan issue.
When
petitioners
attempted to get a sim-
ilar measure on the bal-
lot last year, they commis-
sioned a poll from Patinkin
Research Strategies that
showed 65% of respondents
would have supported a
measure “requiring firearms
be locked up when they are
not being used and requiring
the reporting of lost or sto-
len guns.”
Senate
Republican
Leader Herman Baertsch-
iger Jr., of Grants Pass, said
Thursday that he had not had
a chance to review the ini-
tiative petition, but there is
a possibility he could sup-
port some kind of safe stor-
age bill.
“I certainly don’t know
what they would look like,”
Baertschiger said.
Baertschiger said he
believes more education
would help keep children
safe from accessing guns.
“I grew up around guns
in our household, and kids
were taught, ‘Don’t touch
guns,’ period,” Baertschiger
said. “No problem. When
you were a kid, and you see
a gun, you knew, don’t touch
it. … I think we’ve lost
some of that in our house-
holds … we’re not going
to let our 6-year-old go out
and run a chain saw, are we?
Why would we let him have
access to a gun?”
The National Rifle Asso-
ciation would likely oppose
another storage bill, accord-
ing to Roger Beyer, an Ore-
gon lobbyist for the group.
The NRA opposed Sen-
ate Bill 978, the overall gun
control bill.
That bill contained the
safe storage provisions, with
some key differences from
the petition.
For instance, SB 978 con-
tained criminal penalties for
the gun owner if a minor
obtained a firearm unlaw-
fully, and the minor killed
or injured someone, a pro-
vision that petitioners have
removed from IP 40.
“We feel very strongly
that we’d like to use a seat
belt model of changing
behavior,” Wessinger said.
“The goal is not to penalize
gun owners.”
Most Oregon gun own-
ers store their guns in ways
that align with the petition,
Wessinger said. His goal is
to encourage the remainder
to do so.
Supporters must gather
1,000 sponsorship signa-
tures to get ballot language
approved to circulate Initia-
tive Petition 40.
The petition then needs
112,020 signatures to get
onto Oregonians’ ballots
next November.
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