Central Oregon news anchor Cathy Marshall had good reason to ask the top two candidates for Oregon governor how they would reduce gun violence in the state.

“Safety shattered here in the city of beautiful Bend,” Marshall, a reporter with KTVZ, told Republican Christine Drazan and Democrat Tina Kotek during the gubernatorial debate.

That was four years ago, shortly after a shooter killed two people and injured two others inside a Safeway in Bend before shooting himself.

Now, the same two women are running for governor again. And there’s been yet another mass shooting in Bend; this time at Silver Rail Elementary School that left five people dead, including the shooter.

Polling suggests the race between Gov. Kotek and her Republican challenger could be close. The shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School will certainly be on some voters’ minds.

Both candidates spent time in Bend after the shooting and attended a candlelight vigil in Drake Park. And both have been reluctant to delve too deep into a gun policy debate after such a horrific event.

“I’ve been a strong proponent of our gun violence prevention policies, and we’ve had success here in the state doing evidence-based, reasonable approaches to help people be safe with their firearms,” Kotek said on NPR’s “All Things Considered” last week.

“I don’t think any of us should be politicizing this incident,” the governor said.

Chris Shortell, a professor of political science at Portland State University, said history has shown that candidates have very little to gain politically by centering mass shootings in their campaigns.

“Unfortunately, we can look at multiple instances to see if it moved the needle politically for candidates and there really isn’t an indication that even horrific events like those in Bend are substantively shifting policy preferences of elected officials,” Shortell said.

During the 2022 Central Oregon debate, Kotek and Drazan’s views on gun restrictions broke along familiar party lines.

“I think one of the most important things a governor can do is to keep people safe,” Kotek said on the debate stage, adding she’s worked in the state Legislature to pass expanded background checks, requirements to safely store weapons and red flag laws, which allow people deemed a risk to have their firearms removed.

During the same debate, in 2022, Drazan noted the state already has some of the toughest gun laws on the books.

“I am a supporter of the Second Amendment,” Drazan said at the KTVZ debate. “I believe in our constitutional protections and our constitutional freedoms…We must do more to help mental health supports but adding more gun laws into one of the most restrictive gun law states in the nation will not prevent further tragedies.”

That same year, in 2022, voters approved Measure 114, which would ban high-capacity magazines, require a permit to buy a firearm and require more extensive background checks. The measure hasn’t taken effect yet because it has faced legal challenges. The Oregon Supreme Court is expected to weigh in. Drazan was against the measure while Kotek called it “common sense.”

Since the 2022 election, Oregon has enacted a ban on rapid-fire accessories like bump stocks, which can effectively turn semi-automatic weapons fully automatic. State lawmakers also banned “ghost guns,” 3D-printed firearms without serial numbers.

Drazan, serving in the House, was not present for the vote on rapid-fire accessories and therefore did not vote. She was not in the Legislature for the vote on ghost guns.

On Thursday, Kotek stood in front of students at Lakeridge High School in Lake Oswego and spoke into the bullhorn.

“Gun violence is preventable. Gun violence could be stopped. We have made progress here in our state,” Kotek said in a video provided by the governor’s office. “But we are not done. A child shot other children last week. That’s on the adults. We need to fix it.”

Kotek told the students she hoped to see them in the state Legislature next session as lawmakers continue to pass more regulations to prevent gun violence. She later declined to provide specifics to OPB, noting the investigative work was still happening and it’s too soon to know exactly what could have prevented the latest shooting.

The day after the Silver Rail shooting, Drazan appeared on the City Cast Portland podcast, where she told the host that there are laws in place that should have prevented the shooting at the elementary school in Bend, but that they weren’t followed. For example, the Bend-La Pine school district doesn’t allow guns on school property.

“This is the point at which I don’t have a policy prescription to this yet, but what we have to recognize is the least partisan thing we can all say…is we all want this to stop and the laws that were in place didn’t stop it,” Drazan said.

More recently, Drazan told KOIN 6 that there has to be a way to prevent school shootings and she’s committed to figuring out how to stop them. She said all schools should have a standard of safety across all districts and have school resource officers.

“We cannot allow this to happen again, innocent children cannot, cannot be put at risk anymore,” Drazan said.

Former state Sen. Ginny Burdick, who was a fixture in the Legislature for 25 years and one of the strongest champions of tightening Oregon’s gun laws, believes more could be done.

Burdick said it’s clear the state needs a better mental health system, but that there are ways to make existing laws even stronger and more enforceable.

“If I was in the Legislature today, I would be trying to create a climate where there just weren’t so many damn guns around,” Burdick said.

A father, Kaylub Giamanco, followed the shooter into the school and fatally shot him — an act Bend police have credited with preventing more deaths.

State Rep. Alek Skarlatos, R-Winston, who is the current deputy Republican leader in the Oregon House, praised Giamanco’s bravery but noted even he broke Oregon’s gun laws.

“Ironically, to stop the shooting that individual had to themselves break Oregon law by bringing a firearm into a gun free zone,” Skarlatos said in a press release.

In 2015, Skarlatos, a member of the Oregon National Guard who was returning from a recent deployment to Afghanistan, stopped an armed terrorist on a Paris-bound train.

“There will be time for hard conversations about how we keep our schools safe,” Skarlatos said.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/10/26/oregon-governor-candidates-how-to-end-gun-violence/