New Study Finds Oregon’s Measure 114 Led to a Surge in Gun Sales

Who didn’t see this coming? A new study published in the Journal of Public Economics strongly suggests gun sales in Oregon following the narrow passage of Measure 114 in 2022—the extremely restrictive, and arguably unconstitutional, gun control ballot initiative, which is still before the Oregon state Supreme Court—skyrocketed 157 percent. It is definitely not what the anti-gunners behind the measure, which has been tied up in the courts for nearly four years, wanted to see.

Incredibly, researchers Katie Bollman, Benjamin Hansen, Edward Rubin, and Garrett Stanford acknowledge right up front in their introduction, “Measure 114’s proponents intended to reduce the number of firearms in Oregon, subsequently reducing firearm-related accidents and violence…” This was the driving force behind the permit-to-purchase part of the measure, but as the authors admit in their conclusion, “Our results document that Oregon’s gun-control public referendum, Measure 114, induced substantial increases in firearms background checks throughout the state. This effect was most pronounced between the election—when voters narrowly approved the measure—and the judicial stay that indefinitely paused the measure. During this period, we estimate Measure 114 induced 78,000 additional firearm-related background checks—sufficient for 1.9% of Oregon’s residents to have purchased a gun.”

The study was revealed in a report at Phys.org, from Oregon State University. Titled “Gun policy and the steel paradox,” the study notes, “Background checks, a proxy for demand, rose 13.9% in anticipation of the referendum and surged 157% immediately following the election. After judicial intervention halted the law’s enactment, demand returned (to) near pre-election levels.”

However, it seems the researchers can’t quite figure this out: “Temporal displacement/harvesting does not explain the demand spike: after eighteen months, we still observe a substantial cumulative increase of 63,000 excess firearm-related background checks. Administrative data reveal significant within-state heterogeneity.* This evidence underscores the paradoxical effect of gun-control policies, offering a cautionary lesson to policymakers.”

(*For those who speak normal English, here’s a definition of heterogeneity found online: “The quality or state of consisting of diverse, dissimilar, or non-uniform parts, elements, or people. It is the direct opposite of homogeneity, which describes things that are uniform, identical, or entirely alike.”)

Any Beaver State gun owner could have predicted the gun sales spike, and many of them did. Mention “gun control” anywhere and suddenly there is a rush to every gun shop and sporting goods store within driving distance.

The fact that Measure 114 has been gathering dust before the state high court suggests a couple of possibilities:

• The justices in Salem have determined Measure 114 violates the state constitution and they are reluctant to admit it, and/or
• The court has been stalling on a ruling allowing the Democrat-dominated legislature time to pass legislation designed to get around the constitutionality question.

As the Sportsmen’s Alliance put it earlier this year, “The primary vehicle for legislative action this session, HB 4145-B, has been sent to the Governor’s desk. While the version that passed was significantly stripped down from its original form, don’t let the lack of ‘teeth’ fool you. By passing this measure, the legislature has effectively kicked the can down the road by delaying the implementation of Ballot Measure 114 until January 1, 2028.”

The organization added, “The Sportsmen’s Alliance remains firmly opposed to this strategy of delay. ‘Kicking the can’ is not a victory for the Second Amendment; it is a stall tactic that ignores the fundamental flaws of a measure that remains unconstitutional.”

Virtually every gun rights organization in the country lined up to challenge Measure 114 in state or federal court. While the federal cases are stalled on appeal, it was the state-level lawsuit which initially led to a ruling by a circuit court judge in eastern Oregon that the measure was unconstitutional. The ruling was appealed and now the question is before the state Supreme Court.

The article at Phys.org quotes Katie Bollman, an Oregon State University economist, who observed, “It’s not particularly surprising that people go out and buy more guns when they have compelling reason to believe it’s going to become harder to do so in the future. But the magnitude of the increase is pretty remarkable, as is the underlying dynamic driving it.”

Perhaps not so remarkable; Oregonians living outside of Portland, Salem, Corvallis and Eugene—essentially the liberal Willamette Valley and the I-5 corridor—like guns, they want to own guns, and they strongly believe in the Second Amendment.

The end result is something of a bad dream for the public disarmament lobby. Instead of reducing the number of privately owned firearms, their initiative sparked a buying frenzy. That nobody on the political left imagined just how vigorously Oregonians would be buying guns with the passage of Measure 114 is, perhaps, a testament to their naiveté, the same lack of common sense which leads anti-gunners to believe the passage of “one more law” might earn compliance from criminals.

About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.