Lake Oswego representative’s bill on firearms and suicide is approved

Despite significant dissent, the Oregon Legislature passed a bill by Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, that would create a task force to look at suicide prevention and firearms.

The bill calls for a 17-member task force which would discuss how to support youth experiencing suicide ideation and reduce the stigma around it, as well as examining barriers between people and guns, suicide by gun and community protocols to protect people.

According to a legislative report on the bill, which contained data from the Oregon Health Authority Center for Health Statistics, 477 of the 878 people who died by suicide in Oregon in 2022 did so via firearms.

The bill was passed with a 19-11 vote in the Oregon Senate and a 35-22 vote in the House of Representatives and was approved largely along partisan lines — with Republicans taking issue with the inclusion of firearms as a focus of the task force.

“This bill represents a crucial next step in overcoming stigmas around mental health, supporting our neighbors who are most vulnerable, and saving lives from firearm suicides. The task force created by SB 1503 will provide the Legislature with data-informed, effective, proven steps we could take to reduce firearm suicides in Oregon,” Wagner wrote in testimony supporting the bill.