Rare Bit of Gun Sanity from Oregon Appeals Court

The Pacific Northwest used to be home to a lot of people who had good common sense. Then everything changed. Portland became insane, dragging the rest of the state of Oregon with it, and suddenly, they were hostile toward anything that didn’t serve the progressive cause. In other words, they went hard down the anti-gun road.

So, when I see gun-related news out of Oregon, I expect to see something full of stupid.

However, it seems that a court of appeals there actually exercised a bit of actual reason in a case that involved a convicted felon trying to get rid of the guns he was no longer allowed to own.

The Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday overturned a conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm by a Linn County man on probation following felony charges who sought to dispose of his hunting rifle by selling the gun at a pawnshop without physically touching it.

Chet Thomas Hamilton, 49, was charged in 2023 in Linn County on felony convictions of possessing a firearm. He claimed his cousin had been storing the gun for him, and that the cousin oversaw and executed the sale for him, while he looked on but did not physically hand over the gun for sale. Hamilton did, however, respond “yep” when the pawnbroker asked if he was “good to go,” according to the ruling.  

Hamilton had previous convictions for coercion, identity theft and tampering with a witness. 

Linn County investigators charged Hamilton following the sale, and he was sentenced in Linn County Court to 15 months in prison and two years of post-prison supervision. The court blocked Hamilton’s request to be acquitted of the charges because, he claimed, he did not have the ability to control the sale of the rifle.

But in a split 2-1 decision, the Oregon Court of Appeals found that the state’s evidence against Hamilton failed to show he violated the requirements for conviction that a person with a felony “constructively possessed” the rifle. Appeals Judge Jacqueline Kamins wrote in the ruling that “it is not clear that defendant exercised any custody or control over the rifle.”

The state tried arguing that he had enough control to have his cousin sell the gun, was present, and that if the sale had gone through, he would have left with the rifle. Personally, I see that last as a significant stretch because pawn shops are notorious for being willing to buy anything, and since Hamilton was a felon, he likely wasn’t all that picky.

Plus, if it hadn’t gone through, it’s not like there aren’t other stores in Linn County.

Basically, Hamilton is a prohibited person and was trying to dispose of property he still technically owned, but couldn’t lawfully possess. What he did looks to me like a man trying to do right by the law and the terms of his probation, and prosecutors with a stick up their posteriors decided to punish him for doing it.

Yeah, he could have had the cops just come and take his guns, but that’s real property that has a real value. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to get something for it, even if you can’t lawfully possess it anymore. So, he tried to navigate the law.

“Constructive possession” is kind of a confusing concept because it doesn’t actually mean you have to touch a gun. It can be applied to any case where prosecutors think you have access to a firearm due to your proximity to it. That’s a ridiculously dumbed-down version of it because, well, I’m not an attorney who understands more than the broad strokes of the concept, but it doesn’t require the person to have a gun in their hands, and that’s the problem.

For the Oregon Court of Appeals to look at this and recognize that Hamilton was trying to comply with the law and conducting a lawful sale with someone who was probably an FFL holder–not many pawn shops don’t have an FFL, after all, and I’m worried about any that don’t–is hardly someone who is intending to break the law once again.

The fact that they said there wasn’t enough evidence is because, well, what evidence that existed sure looked like someone trying to follow the rules to avoid further legal problems to me.

It’s not the kind of win I’d prefer to see out of Oregon, but I’ll take a moment of rationality from the courts there if that’s all I can get.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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