Oregon’s hunting, fishing, and livestock‑ban initiative, Initiative Petition 28, is sparking backlash from across the political spectrum.
Gun owners in ballot‑initiative states know this story all too well. For years, the Second Amendment has been chipped away through direct democracy. Now conservatives in red states are watching liberals use the initiative process to bypass Republican legislatures entirely.
But Oregon’s IP 28 takes the absurdity to a new level.
More than 140,000 signatures have already been submitted to the Secretary of State. Verification is expected by August 2nd. If certified, voters will decide whether to ban hunting, ban sport and commercial fishing, and even ban standard farming practices like raising livestock for food.
It’s hard not to wonder whether PETA wrote the thing themselves.
The measure is so extreme that it’s drawing bipartisan opposition. Even Oregon’s very liberal governor, Tina Kotek, says IP 28 would turn ordinary Oregonians into criminals overnight.
Frankly, that sounds a lot like Oregon’s long track record of draconian, ineffective gun laws.
Tribal leaders, Democrat legislative leaders, Oregon’s Democrat U.S. Senators, and local Democrat Party officials are all speaking out against IP 28. The real question is whether these Democrats, who have spent years enabling policies that erode conservative values, can convince their base to reject this PETA‑style extremism.
This is exactly the kind of ideological extremism that shows how fragile our freedoms really are. When activists can gather a pile of signatures and suddenly threaten hunting, fishing, and livestock production, the very backbone of rural life, it proves the initiative process has become a weapon, not a tool.
If IP 28 makes the ballot, Oregon won’t just be voting on an initiative. They’ll be voting on whether common sense still exists in their state. They’ll be voting on whether the loudest fringe can dictate how everyone else lives. And they’ll be voting on whether rural Oregonians, the people who feed the state, deserve to be treated like criminals for simply living the way Americans always have.
If this measure passes, it won’t stop in Oregon. Activists in other states will copy it, push it, and try to ram it through anywhere they think voters aren’t paying attention.
IP 28 is a warning shot. If Oregonians don’t kill it at the ballot box, the rest of the country will be dealing with the fallout next.
