by Shaanth Nanguneri, Oregon Capital Chronicle
August 11, 2026
Oregon voters’ narrow passage of some of the nation’s strictest gun control restrictions in 2022 prompted thousands of new gun purchases in the state despite the restrictions never going into effect, according to a recent study.
Researchers at Oregon State University, the University of Oregon and the Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research made their findings in a late July study published in the Journal of Public Economics. Measure 114, a 2022 voter-approved initiative, bans high-capacity magazines and requires completed background checks, permits and firearm safety training before purchasing guns.
Supporters of the measure have pointed to studies showing that its restrictions can lead to reduced gun purchases and deaths over a long period of time. But researchers found that background checks rose 14% in the runup to the November 2022 election and 157% immediately following Measure 114’s passage, suggesting the goals of the permit-to-purchase restrictions may take longer to materialize should the law be implemented.
“It’s not particularly surprising that people go out and buy more guns when they have compelling reason to believe it’s going to become harder to in the future,” Katie Bollman, an assistant professor of economics at Oregon State University, said in a Monday news release. “But the magnitude of the increase is pretty remarkable, as is the underlying dynamic driving it.”
Measure 114 still hasn’t taken effect in Oregon because it faced a swift legal challenge that has made its way through Oregon’s appellate courts and is now awaiting a ruling from the Oregon Supreme Court. Oregon lawmakers this year voted to allow the measure to go into effect in 2028 should the court uphold the law.
The combination of residents anticipating gun control restrictions and the restrictions failing to go into effect allowed the study to analyze the effect of the measure’s passage, rather than whether people who already intended to buy guns bought them sooner.
Researchers say that if the law goes into effect, it will take more than a year “just to get the number of guns in Oregon back to what it would have been had the referendum effort never taken place.”
They point to an additional 63,000 background checks they found would not have taken by a year and a half after the election without the existence of Measure 114. Not every check results in a purchase, but some can result in the purchase of multiple guns.
“This makes it particularly notable that Measure 114 has not been implemented – there are more guns in Oregon after passing permit-to-purchase than we expected to have if it had not passed,” Bollman said.
Elizabeth McKanna, the chairwoman of Lift Every Voice Oregon, which wrote the 2022 ballot measure, said Measure 114 passed through “one of the most representative ways” possible through a voter-approved ballot measure.
She said her coalition’s goal is to continue pushing for the law to be implemented with the hopes that it stops guns from ending up in the hands of people who fail to pass the measure’s requirements.
“Everybody in Oregon had a chance to vote on it, so it’s good to be public about what we’re doing, but it’s disappointing that that caused so many people to buy guns,” she told the Capital Chronicle. “We just hope they weren’t people who wouldn’t have qualified.”
The surge in purchases does not appear to have significantly lasted beyond the time surrounding Measure 114’s passage. Data from the Oregon State Police, which helps process background checks as an intermediary through the FBI, shows that background checks in the state have been decreasing since 2022, when OSP reported nearly 400,000 checks. In 2025, the agency reported more than 297,000 background checks. The Capital Chronicle reached out to eight gun shops in Oregon which either declined to comment or were not immediately able to provide comment.
Oregon voters approved Measure 114 in 2022 by a 1.3% margin, with opposition stronger in rural, conservative parts of the state and support coalescing in more left-leaning cities. While counties that voted differently contributed roughly the same amount to the increase in Oregon’s firearm sales, researchers found that individuals in counties which opposed the measure were more likely to buy firearms.
Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: [email protected].