A14
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Guns
Continued from Page A1
That provision would impact sales
of AR-15-style rifl es, a popular class
of fi rearm produced by multiple man-
ufacturers. Many AR-15 models come
standard with 30-round magazines.
High-capacity magazines that were
purchased prior to the eff ective date of
the bill will be exempted from the ban,
according to Section 11(5)(a).
Also exempted from the ban are
large-capacity magazines that have
been permanently altered to hold no
more than 10 rounds. Attached tubu-
lar ammunition-feeding devices on
.22-caliber rimfi re rifl es and lever-ac-
tion fi rearms are also not restricted to
10 rounds, according to Section 11 (1),
(A), (B) and (C) of the measure.
Penalties for failing to follow the
guidelines set forth in Measure 114
vary from a Class A misdemeanor
to Class B and C felonies for repeat
off enses.
Hoping to save lives
The Rev. Mark Knutson, pastor of
Augustana Lutheran Church in Port-
land, was one of the leading advocates
behind Measure 114.
Knutson is a member of Lift Every
Voice, an interfaith group seeking to
reduce gun violence. The group arose
following the deadly Pulse nightclub
shooting in 2016 in Orlando, Florida,
which led to the deaths of 46 people.
The work of crafting the measure
began with a group of around 60 indi-
viduals from across the state, accord-
ing to Knutson. The group looked
across the nation for gun measures that
work and that have stood up to consti-
tutional challenges.
The “legislative team,” a collection
of retired lawyers and others with spe-
cialized skills selected from the larger
group, wrote the Oregon measure.
“They crafted it from some of the
best things around the country,” Knut-
son said.
Knutson has heard the constitu-
tional concerns surrounding the mea-
sure and wants to assure people that
the main objective in crafting the bill
was to improve public safety and not to
restrict people’s rights.
“Everything in this bill is proven
to save lives. That’s what this is all
about,” he said.
“It’s not meant to take anybody’s
gun away,” he added. “Nobody is
going to have their guns taken away. If
you already own large-capacity maga-
zines, you keep them.”
Knutson also noted that the pur-
chase permit program in the measure
is modeled after the state concealed
weapons permit program, which is
already in use.
When asked about the concerns
rural law enforcement agencies have
that implementing the measure will
further strain their already limited
resources, Knutson said he and his
group will work with local sheriff ’s
offi ces to make sure they have the
capacity to make the system work.
“We would never want to see
the sheriff sitting there without the
resources they need to do it properly
and do it well and not put others at
risk,” he said.
Knutson stressed that he doesn’t see
the passage of Measure 114 as a vic-
tory over the gun lobby but rather a
victory for the youth and future of Ore-
gon. At the core of Lift Every Voice’s
decision to take action was a religious
obligation, he said.
Because love is at the core of every
religious discipline in the world, Knut-
son thinks that love should guide the
decisions of those who practice their
faith. “If you love your neighbor, but
your neighbor is being hurt or harmed,
you need to do something,” he said.
Bad for business
The Outdoorsman, an outfi tter’s
shop in Ontario, has been selling fi re-
arms for over 80 years. Owner Julie
Clark and managers Ron Smallwood
and Jeremiah Hartman say Measure
114 is a poorly conceived law that will
strip Oregonians of fundamental rights
and could put retailers like them out of
business.
“I think there’s a lot of stupid people
out there who vote away their constitu-
tional rights,” Smallwood said. “With
the permits that are being required for
fi rearms and nothing set up for them to
issue permits at this time, (the new law)
is basically going to shut down fi rearms
sales.”
All three are in agreement that Mea-
sure 114 won’t make a diff erence in
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
combating gun violence and will only
make it harder for law-abiding citizens
to defend themselves against criminals,
who don’t care what the law does or
does not say.
The Outdoorsman sells every-
thing you would need for your fi rearm,
including magazines which hold more
than the 10 rounds allowed by the mea-
sure. The passage of 114 means that
those magazines and potentially other
fi rearm sale operations will have to
move across the Snake River into Idaho,
where gun laws are less restrictive.
The Outdoorsman has been a fi xture
in Ontario’s business scene for decades.
Despite that, Hartman said the business
may have to move to Idaho to keep its
doors open.
“They’re leaving us no choice. We
pretty much have to move to Idaho for
the survival of our business,” Hartman
said.
The group said there have been a lot
of threats to their business model over
the years, but Measure 114 represents
the most signifi cant one that they can
remember.
Caught in the middle
Grant County Sheriff Todd McKin-
ley said he doesn’t believe the law is
constitutionally valid but that his offi ce
would use its discretion in deciding how
to enforce it.
Concerns are numerous for McKin-
ley. His offi ce would have to imple-
ment a database for all the purchase per-
mits and square up all the logistics to
provide live fi re training to all poten-
Escape
tial gun owners in the county — some-
thing McKinley doesn’t think he has the
resources to accomplish.
“There are 7,100 citizens in the
county,” the sheriff said. “If half of them
want to get their permit, that’s 3,500
people. That’s a lot of people to train to
get permits in a short amount of time so
they can go exercise their constitutional
rights. It’s going to be expensive, and
we do not have the funding to do that.”
Aside from the fi nancial concerns,
McKinley said he has constitutional
concerns with the bill as well. “I feel it
is completely unconstitutional, because
it actually enacts basically Nazi Germa-
ny-type gun registration,” he said.
The stated goal of the measure
misses the mark, added McKinley, who
doesn’t see criminals following any
type of gun regulations in their pursuit
to obtain fi rearms.
“It’s a useless measure,” he said. “It
did nothing but enable an element, and
this one is just criminalizing people fur-
ther that are otherwise law-abiding.”
Despite those concerns, McKinley
said his offi ce will have to comply with
the permit process so Grant County cit-
izens can exercise their constitutional
rights to keep and bear arms.
“We are not in favor of it at all, my
offi ce isn’t, but in order to keep people’s
constitutional rights alive to be able to
purchase fi rearms if the permit process
comes about, that’s what we have to
do,” he said. “We’re going to have to do
it. I may have to pull staff off of patrol
to help assist in that process, which will
further make us shorthanded.”
Getting away
Continued from Page A1
wrestling with that, with the
idea of escape. Should we
escape? Should we not?” Kor-
ver said.
In December 2021, after
more than 60 days under guard,
the group began to reevaluate the
notion of an escape.
“Diff erent things had hap-
pened leading up to that point.
After some things we’d seen we
were pretty sure these gangsters
didn’t have our best interests in
mind,” Korver said.
She said many members
of the group were “feeling like
maybe God wants us to step out
and try to escape.”
Korver said others were not
so sure.
“There were defi nitely some
others who did not feel good
about it yet,” she said.
Planning an escape
In December, one member
of the group — a man named
Wes — decided to test the level
of security around the house and
small yard, Korver said.
“One of the young men
decided, ‘I am going to try to go
into the bushes,’” she said.
A 4- to 5-foot-tall viney
plant formed a fence-like hedge
Melodi Korver/Contributed Photo
Melodi Korver, her husband, Ryan, and their two children, cen-
ter, pose with the eight other hostages for a photo on Dec. 16,
2021, shortly after returning to the Haitian mission following
their escape after 62 days in captivity.
around most of the small yard,
and an outhouse with an open
back faced the bushes.
Wes pretended he needed
to use the outhouse and then
slipped out the back.
“The guards never noticed
he was missing,” Korver said.
“They weren’t keeping an eagle
eye on all of us all of the time.”
The group had developed
a prearranged signal to let Wes
know when it was safe for him
to come back into the yard.
“We could see a footpath
going past on the north edge of
the compound,” Korver said.
“And there was a big mango
tree, maybe 20 feet away. And
so we knew if we could get out
of the compound and out to that
mango tree and that footpath,
well, you’d be on the main path
then at least.”
Meanwhile, Korver’s hus-
band was praying.
“He said, ‘God, if you don’t
want us to escape, send Wes out
of those bushes just all discour-
aged about it,’” she said.
When Wes came out of the
bushes at the prearranged sig-
nal “he just had this silly grin on
his face,” she said. “He was like,
‘Guys, we can do this.’”
Korver said her husband felt
God say, “This is what I want
you to do.”
“It just felt very, very clear to
him that God was saying, ‘You
need to take your family and
leave this place,’” she said.
Melodi Korver/Contributed Photo
Melodi Korver’s daughter,
Laura, is held by a friend of the
family, Edithe Clergy, in Haiti
in 2021.
The hostages had fallen into a
routine over the months.
“In the morning and then at
1 p.m. and then in the evening
before we went to bed, we’d
gather and all sing, pray, and just
have a sharing time together,”
she said.
At the 1 p.m. session, Ryan
Korver told the group he felt he
“had clearance to go.”
One man, who had been
opposed to an escape attempt,
said Wes’ jaunt into the bushes
showed him it was time to go.
“And just like that everyone
was on board. Everyone was
united,” Korver said.
On Dec. 15, at about 3 a.m.
the group made their escape bid.
They walked out of the yard,
down the trail and hiked more
than 10 miles.
They were in jungle, it was
night, and they were clearly not
Haitians. So many things could
have gone wrong.
But nothing did.
As they walked, they did not
encounter any other people.
“I felt so strongly that God
was in this. Even the fact we
had hiked pretty much 10 miles
without meeting anybody,” Kor-
ver said.
They walked until they
reached a main highway at about
8 a.m. Then they met a Haitian
man who had a cellphone.
The group called the mission
and immediately someone was
on the way to pick them up. Kor-
ver said in her mind there is no
doubt God intervened that night.
“It’s a miracle. If you’ve been
in Haiti, it’s so full of people.
And that no dog came out and
barked. There were three guards
sitting in the yard who were on
their phones. We just prayed that
God would blind their eyes and
their ears,” she said.
After they were picked up
and brought back to the mis-
sion, the FBI fl ew the group to
the United States.
“The FBI had been heav-
ily involved pretty much from
day one,” Korver said, adding
while they were in captivity, the
group noticed from time to time
a plane circled nearby through-
out the day.
The FBI never confi rmed the
plane was searching for the hos-
tages, but Korver said she is sure
it played a role.
Korver said she felt the pres-
ence of her young children
helped with the kidnappers.
“They would bring special
treats for the children,” she said.
“They would sometimes bring
them bananas and mangos.”
Korver said the children
seemed to believe they were on
some “weird camping trip.”
“I do not feel like they
are traumatized by the whole
thing,” she said. “It’s just
something that happened.”
God, she said, also played a
role in protecting the group from
sexual assault and other trials.
Korver said she feels that
while their story is important —
especially the group’s reliance
on faith — many Haitians are
kidnapped on a regular basis but
their stories are never heard.
“Because we were Americans,
it was all over the news,” she said.
“There’s probably several hundred
Haitians kidnapped right now and
they never make the news.”
Coffee Break!
Puzzle solutions can be found in today’s classifieds
CLUES ACROSS
1. Single Lens Reflex
4. People of southern
Benin
7. One who is learned
(abbr.)
10. Neckwear
11. Solid water
12. A way to work the soil
13. Inspiring
15. Pick up
16. It wakes you up
19. Parcel
21. Popular dog breed
23. Lets out a sigh
24. Embedded into the
surface
25. Hard liquors
26. One from Scotland
27. Satisfy
30. Used to introduce a
contrasting statement
34. Antidepressant drug
type (abbr.)
35. Similar
36. Winged horse
41. Soft drink maker
45. One who doesn’t live
up to expectations
46. Nursemaid
47. Inheritor
50. Hot, often dusty wind
54. Serves as an intro-
duction
55. Earned top billing
56. Mansion
57. A partner to a carrot
59. War-horse
60. Midway between
northeast and east
61. It checks the heartbeat
62. Aquatic salamander
63. CNN’s founder
64. Being precisely
suitable and right
65. Strongly alkaline
solution
22. Unusual
27. Small European viper
28. Indicates before
29. Birth swine
31. 7
32. Useful keyboard key
33. Letter of the Greek
alphabet
37. Edible mollusk
38. Stitched up
39. Utilized
40. __ in tradition
41. A way to get through
42. Let off
CLUES DOWN
1. Pinochle trick
43. Fashionable source
2. A system of connec-
of shade
tions
44.
In due time
3. Emblems of royalty
4. Work with a soft hand 47. Printing speed
5. Plant cultivated in Peru 48. A major division of
6. A timid man
geological time
7. Lacking intellectual
49.
Nocturnal, cat-like
depth
mammal
8. A way to order
9. Intoxicating
51. __ de la __
13. Mimic
52. After B
14. Surfers use it
53. Unusual
17. Small Eurasian deer
58. Former money of
18. Popular Miller beer
20. Finds out about
the EU
WORDS
Fun By The Numbers
Like puzzles? Then you’ll love sudoku. This mind-
bending puzzle will have you hooked from the
moment you square off, so sharpen your pencil and
put your sudoku savvy to the test!
ADOPTION
AGENCY
ASSISTANCE
ATTORNEY
BIRTH PARENT
CHILDREN
CLOSED
CONFIDENTIALITY
CONSULTANT
DISSOLUTION
DOSSIER
FINALIZED
FOSTER
HOME STUDY
KINSHIP
LICENSED
OPEN
ORGANIZATIONS
PLACEMENTS
PROSPECTIVE
RELINQUISHMENT
SCREENING
SEALED
TRIAD