Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon signed a bill in May that requires greater background checks for gun transfers.
It was the state's first major gun-control law in more than a decade, and for Brown, Oregon's former secretary of state, who took office in February during a political scandal, it was also a firm statement of the new direction she wanted the state to take.
The Douglas County sheriff, John Hanlin, who is now leading the team investigating the shootings Thursday at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, was one of the bill's main opponents.
"This law is not going to protect citizens of Oregon in that it is going to keep guns out of the hands of criminals," Hamlin told the state Legislature in testifying against the bill. And, he added, poor counties like his would not have the means to enforce it.
"Our budget is continuously shrinking to the point that there are times when we have a difficult time simply responding to domestic disturbances, vehicle crashes, the ordinary calls for service that happen every day," he said in his videotaped testimony. "To expect local law enforcement to run down and do an investigation into whether or not an individual, a private individual, has conducted a background check is nearly impossible."
The divide between the governor and the sheriff shows how questions of gun rights and restrictions reflect not just divisions between conservatives and liberals, or between high-crime and low-crime areas, but also between rich communities and poor ones.
In Oregon, the divide between urban places, which are booming — especially the state's largest city, Portland — and rural ones, which are largely struggling, has often shaped the debate over guns and other social issues. And the clash has intensified as inequality has grown, with cities becoming hubs of technology, as well as population growth —giving them increased clout in the Legislature — while places like Douglas County have been starved for resources and population as old extraction industries like timber have stumbled.
"There is absolutely no question that there is a rural-urban divide in Oregon," Brown, a Democrat, said in an interview Friday. "I think that is part of a conversation about how we create safer communities in the future."
Part of the dynamic of the gun law question in Oregon — and the gun debate nationally — has been the role of national groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, the organization funded by Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor.
The group, which announced a $50 million campaign last year to support gun-control candidates and legislation, spent more than $110,000 in Oregon last year, with a focus on shifting a few important legislative seats that would lead to majority support for the background check law that Brown signed.
It went into effect in August.
Even with the new law, the main contours of who can and cannot buy a guy in Oregon mirror those of most other states in the nation, where the Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment protects individuals' right to bear arms. No license is required simply to purchase a handgun or a long gun, although when going to their local gun shops to buy firearms, people must pass background checks conducted by the state police that bar people who have felony convictions, have been involuntarily committed to a mental health institution, or fall into certain other prohibited categories.
When it comes to a license to carry a concealed handgun, Oregon is what is considered a "shall issue" state, which means that, for the most part, local authorities have little discretion to deny someone such a permit. Sheriffs do have the right under the law to deny someone a permit if there are "reasonable grounds" to believe the person is a danger to himself or others as a result of his mental state or "past pattern of behavior involving unlawful violence or threats of unlawful violence."
The gunman in Roseburg, identified as Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, did not appear to have warranted a denial. U.S. officials said all 13 of his guns, including six found at the scene, were legally obtained by him and his relatives.
States in recent years have gone both ways, with the number of legislatures toughening gun laws about equal to the number weakening them, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a group based in San Francisco, in an analysis last year. But that group and others like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence also said that some new control measures, notably Oregon's this year, are tougher and more far-reaching than the laws making gun ownership easier.
In Oregon, the background check measure was led mostly by Democrats from Portland, who largely control the Legislature, and some rural lawmakers cited a cultural divide in voting no. In many parts of the state, Portland is seen as alien, a place that does not understand the real Oregon.
At a news conference Friday, for example, Hanlin was asked whether it was normal for one person to own so many guns.
"In Oregon?" he said. "This is a hunting state. Firearms are popular in most households."
Hanlin has been an especially vocal critic of efforts to toughen gun laws. After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Hanlin posted a letter to Vice President Joe Biden on his department's Facebook page, arguing that efforts to restrict gun ownership "would be an indisputable insult to the American people."
Hanlin also shared a link on his personal Facebook page to a YouTube video that suggested that the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 — and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — might have been staged by the federal government to provide a pretext for "disarming the public" through gun-control legislation.
That post was removed Friday after it attracted criticism. But in the region where he works, gun rights are often fiercely defended.
Private gun ownership for protection, and in some cases armed citizen patrols in depressed areas of Oregon where cuts in law enforcement budgets have been particularly severe, have added another wrinkle to the debate.
A few years ago, after burglaries rose about 70 percent as law enforcement budgets were battered in Josephine County — another timber-economy community just south of Roseburg — patrol groups took up where police had left off. Their guns, the patrollers said, were helping keep the community safe.
Brown, however, said attacks were not limited to any demographic or ZIP code.
"They have occurred in rural Oregon and urban Oregon, and we need to figure out a way," Brown said. As for answers, she added, the details and ideas will come later. For now, she said, residents in Roseburg and Oregonians generally are still in grief and shock.
But safety is paramount and should cut through the usual divides, Brown said. Oregon and other states, she said, need to figure out "how we can come together around this tragedy and future tragedies and figure out a way to build healthier communities where our children, whether they're in community college or in kindergarten, feel safe going to school — and where conflict is resolved through much more peaceful means."