Gunning for safety

County’s firearms permits skew heavily to the east side

By Peter Korn

The Portland Tribune, Oct 21, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Michele Waldrop packs heat.

The petite, 38-year-old Waldrop carries it almost everywhere, from downtown to Clackamas Town Center, concealed in a holster. In 10 years of walking around in public with her semiautomatic, Waldrop has never removed the weapon from its hiding place. Still, she’s glad it’s there, hugging her hip.

Is she safer because she carries a gun? Well, she thinks so.

“I’m a single mom, and I walk my dog every night at 11 p.m.,” the Gresham resident says. “You want me walking out there without my gun? This is my security.”

Waldrop is not alone.

A breakdown of concealed-firearms permits conducted for the Portland Tribune by the Multnomah County sheriff’s office shows that an overwhelming number of applications and permits come from the eastern portions of Portland and Multnomah County.

There is nothing more subjective than a sense of personal safety. Portland Mayor Tom Potter has announced a campaign to attack the small crimes and nuisances that occur on downtown streets, but even he says the primary problem is not unsafe streets, but people’s perception of safety.

Apparently people on the east side of the Willamette River feel a lot more unsafe than those elsewhere.

There’s one big caveat, of course, to using concealed-weapons permits to analyze gun ownership: Most people who have guns, and who carry them legally or illegally, don’t have concealed-weapons permits.

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