Following the Silver Rail Elementary School shooting in Bend, Oregon lawmakers across the political spectrum have shared publicly their grief and their personal experiences with mass shootings and firearm violence.
But Oregon’s Democratic and Republican leaders have split when it comes to approaching policy conversations following the Oct. 15 tragedy that was caused by a teen gunman who killed three children and a teacher before being tackled by another teacher and fatally shot by a local parent who followed him into the school.
Democratic lawmakers have largely moved with caution, declining to share specific policy ideas related to gun regulations or school safety in the week after the shooting on the grounds that they are focused on supporting the community. Mack Smith, a spokesperson for Oregon’s House Democrats, told the Capital Chronicle that lawmakers would be in touch when they are ready to comment on policy proposals in response to the shooting.
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, responded within days of the shooting by taking aim at the state’s Democratic leadership, blaming the majority party for failing to pass several bills during the 2023 Legislative session that would have required metal detectors at schools declared gun-free zones, required the state to fund security officers at schools and would have funded a study on the costs and benefits of creating single secure points of entry for schools.
Oregon Republican Party Chair Connie Whelchel in a news release on Oct. 15 shared that her own children once attended Bend-La Pine School District, and praised the 36-year-old father, later identified as Kaylub Giamanco, who grabbed a legally permitted firearm from his car and followed the gunman into the school, killing him. Whelchel also took aim at an Oregon law passed in 2021 that allowed the district to prohibit firearms on school property, regardless of whether an individual has a concealed handgun license.
“We must be willing to examine whether our current policies adequately protect our children and whether they unnecessarily restrict the ability of responsible, law-abiding individuals to respond when innocent lives are in immediate danger,” she said in the news release. “These are questions that deserve thoughtful, serious consideration as the facts become clear.”
LaJuana Decker, a spokesperson for the Oregon Republican Party, declined an interview request on Whelchel’s behalf on the grounds that the statement was “all Chair Whelchel has to say at this sensitive time.”
The Democratic Party of Oregon’s leadership, meanwhile, sharply rebuked Whelchel’s statement and said that its focus was standing with the families of the three children and teacher who lost their lives as well as the Bend community’s students and staff.
“The Republican Party’s release — which criticized specific policies before the facts were released and an investigation has been completed — is not a pathway to better policy, but political grandstanding,” Nathan Soltz, chair of the Democratic Party of Oregon, said in a statement. “There will be a serious conversation about how this happened, but right now the grief in the Bend community should be met with support and understanding, not political agendas.”
Republican lawmakers poised to revive school safety measures
While Oregon ranks as 12th in the nation for its gun safety laws, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control research and advocacy group, strong support for ownership exists across political identities in the state.
Legislation around guns has long been a polarizing issue in Salem. A Democrat-sponsored bill during the 2023 Legislative session that would have raised the age to possess semiautomatic weapons from 18 to 21, and to allow local governments to ban firearms on public property fueled a GOP walkout. And voters’ narrow approval in 2022 of Measure 114, which outlaws the sale of high-capacity magazines and requires completed background checks, permits and firearm safety training before purchasing guns, is still tied up in courts.
Those dynamics and fierce Republican opposition pushed Oregon Democrats to water down an ambitious gun control bill they proposed this year that would have bolstered the rollout of Measure 114 by raising permitting fees, among other changes. Instead, Democrats gutted the bill and replaced it with language that pushes back the law’s implementation to 2028 should it survive court challenges.
The Bend Police Department has confirmed the shotgun used by the gunman was purchased legally but has not provided other details about how the shooter acquired it. Oregon law allows parents to gift their minor children long-range guns or for temporary use for activities such as hunting.
That law doesn’t allow parents to give guns to kids who have been placed under the care of the Oregon Health Authority or discharged from juvenile court jurisdiction for serious crimes in the past four years. It’s unclear if the gunman’s mother violated the state’s safe-storage law, requiring gun owners to keep firearms locked away and out of reach of unsupervised minors when not in use.
Rep. Anna Scharf, R-Amity, took to social media three days after the Silver Rail shooting to decry the failure of the 2023 Republican school security bills, and wrote that Bend-La Pine School District’s gun-free policy made it “a soft target for a person with nothing but a desire to kill innocent people.”
In an interview, Scharf said she felt concerned that the state has focused too much on restricting legal gun owners and creating gun-free zone signs, rather than doing more to address mental health issues or getting police officers into schools to prevent violence before it takes place. She said her intention in her Facebook post was not to assert that metal detectors in schools would have prevented the shooting in Bend.
“The point that was trying to be made with all of these ideas is there are ideas that are preventative measures,” she said. “But signs don’t stop bad guys and they definitely don’t slow them down.”
There is mixed evidence for the unsucessful Republican policy proposals put forward in 2023. A 2019 study of school “hardening” strategies found no evidence that measures such more stringent locks and physical barriers reduce gun violence. Another 2021 study found that more people die in gun violence events in schools with armed resource officers. A more recent 2026 study, however, found that locked doors can prevent more casualties.
House Republican Leader Rep. Lucetta Elmer, R-McMinnville, said that legislative conversations about guns and school safety in 2027 would likely be a “wrestle” but that she is coming into the session “more seasoned.”
She said she is open to proposals that would fund reinforced school entrances and locks on classroom doors, as well as revisiting the Oregon law that allows parents and guardians to gift long-range guns to minors. She said she also wants lawmakers to consider broader societal issues such as mental health and the role of the internet.
“It’s hard to legislate out,” she told the Capital Chronicle. “Not that you shouldn’t continue to try and do that, but I would hope that also there are other conversations happening that would lead to addressing those other underlying issues that could really get at the heart of the matter.”
Advocates gear up for debate in Salem
Such conversations among lawmakers in Salem are also likely to generate interest from gun control advocates and gun owners across the political spectrum.
Derek LeBlanc, a leading Oregon firearm advocate and founder of the Oregon Gun Owners Action League, shared in a blog post four days after the shooting a bill he’d like to propose for consideration in the upcoming Legislative session in January that would repeal all Oregon laws that could create potential criminal penalties for “the hero in Bend” and create civil protections for “the defenders.”
He told the Capital Chronicle that he sees an opportunity in some Democrats’ skepticism in the recent bill meant to bolster Measure 114, and the immediate rise in concealed carry handgun license applications in the days after the Silver Rail shooting, according to a Thursday announcement by the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.
“It’s too bad it happens after a tragedy,” he said. “But maybe I can utilize that new interest in personal protection as a way to be the catalyst to help this bill move forward.”
Amie Wexler, executive director of the Portland-based Alliance for a Safe Oregon, pushed back on the Republican policy proposals, such as the move to increase school security and police officers, as lacking evidence and not taking into account the experiences of students from diverse ethnic backgrounds who statistically suffer higher levels of racial profiling by law enforcement inside and outside of schools.
While she is in support of lawmakers revisiting Oregon’s law regarding access to long-range guns for minors, she cautioned against what she called “pressure to legislate backwards.”
“We do need to have clarity in Oregon law,” she said of the law allowing minors access to firearms. “And I think right now there’s been some confusion, as we’re all discovering, unfortunately.”
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