The federal judge who on Dec. 6 refused to issue a temporary restraining order blocking Oregon’s gun control Measure 114 from taking effect offered some curious logic in her ruling that would have allowed one provision of the measure — a ban on the sale of gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds — to take effect Thursday, Dec. 8.

U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut’s ruling was superseded several hours later, at least temporarily, by a ruling from Robert S. Raschio, judge in Harney County Circuit Court (Raschio is also the judge for the Grant County Circuit Court).

Raschio granted a temporary restraining order to the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed Dec. 2 in Harney County. Raschio’s decision put on hold all provisions of Measure 114, which include the magazine ban, and a requirement that people obtain a permit, and take a state-approved firearm safety course, before buying a gun in Oregon.

Immergut’s decision would have allowed the ban on gun magazines to take effect, while temporarily delaying the other provisions in the measure. Her ruling was in a federal lawsuit challenging Measure 114 as a violation of the Second Amendment.

The plaintiffs in the Harney County case that Raschio ruled on, meanwhile, contend the measure, which Oregon voters narrowly approved Nov. 8, violates Oregon’s Constitution.

Immergut’s decision doesn’t affect Raschio’s ruling, so for now the measure, in its entirety, can’t take effect.

The Oregon Department of Justice filed a motion on Wednesday, Dec. 7 asking the Oregon Supreme Court to immediately review Raschio’s decision, but the state’s highest court declined to block the judge’s temporary restraining order.

(The Department of Justice did something similar in May 2020 after Judge Matt Shirtcliff of Baker County Circuit Court granted a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging Gov. Kate Brown’s executive orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The same day Shirtcliff made his ruling, the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay that blocked Shirtcliff’s order from taking effect. The state Supreme Court later ordered Shirtcliff to withdraw the injunction. The plaintiffs dropped the lawsuit soon after.)

As for Measure 114, Immergut didn’t think much of the plaintiffs’ assertion that higher-capacity magazines, the sale and transfer of which would be banned under Measure 114, are in most cases used lawfully.

The plaintiffs cited no evidence for that beyond “broad assertions,” Immergut wrote in her 43-page ruling.

But it seems beyond question that, just as the vast majority of guns are never used in a crime, so it is with the magazines affected by Measure 114.

It could hardly be otherwise, considering a tiny percentage of Americans ever use a gun, regardless of its ammunition capacity, while committing a crime.

There’s an estimated 350 million or so firearms, of all types, in private ownership in the U.S., according to the federal government. The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates that there are almost 80 million detachable magazines in the country that have a capacity of more than 30 rounds.

And although estimates vary on the number of crimes people commit using firearms, and magazines with capacities of more than 10 rounds, the numbers are fractional compared with the total number of both guns and magazines, as well as the owners of both things.

Yet Immergut sided with the defendants, Gov. Kate Brown and Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, whose attorneys proffered statistics showing that higher-capacity magazines are disproportionately used in mass shootings.

The judge noted in her ruling that in every mass shooting in the U.S. since 2004 that resulted in 14 or more deaths, the murderer used such magazines.

This gets to the crux of the debate.

It’s beyond dispute that mass shooters frequently use larger-capacity magazines. Yet given the number of those magazines that exist now, it seems decidedly unlikely that any law, including Oregon’s Measure 114, would deprive these killers access to such magazines.

But the law absolutely would have an effect — a disproportionate effect, to borrow from Immergut’s ruling — on law-abiding citizens whose purchase of such magazines poses no threat to anyone.