Portland has officially reached the point where a gun free building might soon come with an asterisk.
After a recent protest disrupted a City Council meeting, Portland Councilor Loretta Smith announced she is drafting an ordinance that would allow council members to openly carry firearms while conducting city business. Smith said she felt unsafe after demonstrators interrupted the meeting, chanted, and approached the dais holding a petition with 19000 signatures.
No firearms were involved in the protest. No one was shot. No one was injured. The most dangerous object in the room appears to have been a stack of printed paper.
City Hall, however, is currently enforced as gun free. Security at the building confirms firearms are not allowed inside. Members of the public cannot walk into the building armed, concealed or otherwise. The rule applies to everyone entering through those doors.
Everyone, apparently, except potentially the people writing the rules.
Smith framed her proposal as a defensive mechanism, arguing that visible firearms could deter aggressive behavior. She said the increasingly tense atmosphere at meetings has left her and colleagues feeling vulnerable.
So the proposed solution is this.
Keep City Hall gun free for the public.
Create an exception for the elected officials seated at the front of the room.
In other words, the same city that enforces firearm restrictions inside its central government building may now consider allowing politicians to strap on sidearms while constituents remain disarmed in the audience.
The optics are remarkable.
Portland has spent years debating gun control, public safety, and who should be allowed to carry firearms in shared spaces. Now, inside one of the most tightly regulated buildings in the city, the people with microphones may soon be the only ones visibly armed.
All sparked by a protest that involved raised voices and raised paperwork.
To be clear, council members have cited legitimate concerns about safety. Past officials have faced threats. Meetings have gone remote. Security presence has increased. Tensions over immigration enforcement and federal policy have boiled over into City Hall chambers.
But the leap from loud protest to open carry at the dais is a dramatic one.
If the building is too sensitive for licensed citizens to carry inside, what makes it safer when the firearm is attached to an elected official. If the public is required to comply with gun free signage at the entrance, why would the exception apply only to those behind the microphones.
Perhaps the next council agenda will include updated chamber decor. Wood paneling, nameplates, and now standard issue holsters.
Because nothing says de escalation like adding visible firearms to the most politically charged room in Portland.
The legal team will review the proposal. The public will weigh in. And Portland will once again test a bold new civic theory.
Gun free for you. Potentially armed for us.
Source: OPB
