I was talking to one of my friends who owns a house in Oregon and plans on moving back there.

I had always assumed Oregon was a gun-hating, hippy state like Washington and California. He told me that's definitely not the case.

My wife likes the idea of New Hampshire, which I'm not 100% opposed to but I'd like to get away from the East Coast.

One of the guys I work with has been pushing Texas pretty hard and I'm not opposed that moving there either but my wife has this pre-conceived idea that it's all scrubby desert and she wants "seasons".

Would Oregon suit her better?

Here you go.

Where are you coming from?
I'm not going to try to "sell" anybody on oregon. In western oregon it seems to rain about 9 months a year, I just refere to everything that isn't summer as "winter", just 9 months of straight rain.
Oregon is pretty anti gun, not the people, but the government. No reciprocation on CHLs. Our state does it's own background checks on firearms purchases and they are constantly dicking around and delaying people for unknown reasons. I foresee us getting some pretty heavy gun control here soon, the had no problem enacting a recent law that requires BGs on private sales. National concealed carry failed by 2 votes..... both of the oregon senators voted against it.
My oppinion, I've seen 2 sides of oregon, there is the rural areas that look like the movie deliverance (toothless meth addicted hillbillies), then there are areas like portland and eugene that look like freakin San Francisco or Woodstock (ULTRA liberal / hippy).
I've wanted to move to vermont or new hamshire my self. I also have family from texas and it sounds good also.

I left NJ about 2.25 years ago and took a contract job in Kwajalein (Marshall Islands). Can't retire here and wouldn't want to. It's an Army air base.

My buddy made Oregon sound a lot cooler than you're describing it. He's into guns but I don't know how knowledgeable he is when it comes to the politics going on behind the scenes.

I'll give you my honest opinion,  as a guy who has lived in Oregon for a good while and bought a house in the midwest.

The weather really isn't as bad as everybody makes it out to be.  If you aren't right on the coast, the rain isn't as bad.  It will get wet though.  It rarely snows.  Summers are rarely unbearable, though they have gotten warmer than I'd like.  

The scenery is absolutely awesome.  Mountains, ocean is nearby,  desert if you like that sort of thing and I-84 is the best scenery you'll get on an interstate highway in the US.  Crater Lake is well worth a visit even in the off months.  

Hunting is mixed.  We have plenty of game animal seasons (Deer, elk, cougar, bear) that are open to just buying a tag.  Deer hunting is a challenge though.  It's not sitting around in a blind all day kind of stuff,  I was hiking ~20 miles a day during my weekends in season, up and down a mountain.  The deer are relatively small and not anything impressive.  Elk hunting is supposedly some of the best in the country though with some very nice trophies being pulled out of the state.  Bear can be had too.

Your car won't rust from the bottom up.  It's reversed out here and may grow moss on the roof.

Housing prices suck if you want to be within "driving distance" of any city that you've ever heard of.  They also suck within driving distance of any city that has more than two breweries.  Hipsters fucked that up.  I bought a house in Michigan in October for $87,000.  The same house in metro Portland would be listed for near $400,000.  

Gun ownership...  All NFA is legal.  Concealed carry is legal, though there is no reciprocity for out of state permits.  Open carry is legal statewide with a concealed permit (restrictions apply with no permit).  Hunting with suppressors is legal.  No mag capacity limits.  A few key pesky people in local government are attempting to make trouble for some gun laws though.  Recently, Oregon lost private party sales without an FFL transfer.  Ginny Burdick has been pushing for other laws to change.

Hope this helps.

Another thing. Texas has a self sustaining econemy. The entire state of Oregon gets federal "timber net" money (thank you Bill Clinton!). Our state is entirely dependent on federal hand outs. In my county I am told only 50% of residents are "part of the work force". I moved here from California to be with my ageing  parents. The econemy here sucks. I have to drive almost 40 miles to make $10 an hour bustin my back doing hard work. Now my employer is dicking me over and cutting down to 6 hours a day. I get that some people get to see a different side of Oregon, my parents for example, my dad retired from a good union job in SoCal and they get to just go shopping and dining out and generally seeing things through rose coloured glasses so to speak, but if you have to work it is a different world here. If you don't have to work (OP mentioned retireing) (ever watch the TV show "Portlandia?" They sing that song where they say "portland is where youg people move to retire and nobody has any ambition." LOL, so true) you can hunt and fish all day here. Where I live I can leave my driveway and go ride ATVs, dirt bikes, drive my 4X4 into the mountains on BLM / forest service / logging roads, go shooting at numerious gravel pits or pull outs along these roads, go fishing at a couple ponds right up the road, hunt right in my back yard, ect.
BUT, look at real estate prices. I had been looking around a few years ago and you could (last time I checked) buy homes & land in VT, NH, AR, KY, TX and AZ for like 25% of what they cost here. I mean I was flaburgasted (sp) at how cheap you could buy an old farm in NH for. Our houseing prices here are driven my people like my parents who move up here from California with big money. There's a guy down the streat from us selling an old small house on about a hundred acre hay field and he wants 1.5 MILLION! I've done the math and selling grass hay off that land may make $4,000 a year GROSS, maybe. People pay 1.5 million just to look out at the land and sip their chai latte, or whatever.
Just do your self a favor and don't decide on a state before you compare a few states. My parents didn't compare anything when they moved here, they just moved to a place they could drive to in one day from California. (like most californians.)
BTW, I used to live in NJ when I was in the military and drove through there a lot when I drove trucks long haul. Beautiful state. It ain't called "the garden state" for nothing, but I get where you're coming from with all the stupid laws there. People gotta ruin a place. ETA: while oregon is pretty gun friendly ATM, it seems to be changeing fast. If I had to start over I'd move to a more gun friendly state, Idaho for example. I heard Idaho has made a law making it a crime for local or state LEOs to enforce federal gun laws. There are states that are actually passing laws to protect gun rights, While in Oregon our politicions are trying to make more gun restricting laws.
To answer your second setence in the original post: Oregon is a blue state, so yeah, you were correct.

Pot is legal here

Previous posters were right about the hippies.

Your friend is lying!

Oregon (overall) IS a gun-hating, hippy state like Washington and California. Geographically, most of the state IS red, but the masses are in Portland and the other more cosmopolitan burbs down the Willamette Valley, the masses make the numbers and the numbers rule for all of us; Oregon is a blue state to be sure.

As for firearms, we did away with the "gunshow loophole" years ago and just recently outlawed person-to-person sales; everything must go through an FFL nowadays (with a tiny few exceptions). All Class III is still legal (for the time being - they haven't gone after that ...yet). Keep in mind, this state has had a liberal governor and legislature now for decades and its only going more left.

Housing, as mentioned is out of control in Portland and surrounding communities. Smaller towns where there aren't any jobs seem to be a bit better off, but not by much; all the "popular" places to live are spendy.

Jobs... seems like having a skill is a must; not much for unskilled labor. I'm a government employee though, so what do I know about real work.

Oregon is MY home though, I grew up here and will stay as long as I can, but am formulating an exit strategy ...just in case. Idaho does seem like a nice place.

Thanks guys.... you're definitely helping me decide where I don't want to move.

The next movie I make will hopefully be my last. And while it might seem crazy to some people, gun laws (or lack of) are a strong factor in my decision making process.

NH is a weird state. It's very close to a couple states that are insanely blue, the governor is a Dem, and it looks like they vote in more dem presidents than republicans in the last 5 or so elections. So that state looks like it could easily swing to the dark side and I'm leary about moving to a state that close to the edge.

Texas is still pretty high on my list.

I found this video it pretty much sums up oregon, or at least portland, eugene and a few other metro areas. Seriously, you can see people dressed just like the people in this video just walking around in oregon.

Pick a spot on the map near what you like, mountains, lakes, rivers.....

nevermind. It works now. Was trying to fix the pic.

If you feel strongly about your gun rights I would not advise picking Oregon. Oregon is now under hard left control and we are heading for a gun rights train wreck in the pending future.

N ID is pretty awesome IMO.  Not very thriving economically, and real estate is climbing but it is beautiful.  Lots of good lakes, good Gun laws, great summers, snow in the winter and generally people are pretty down to earth to red neck there.  If I could I would move up to the CdA/Sandpoint area.  I like snow in the winter, actually having game to hunt (OR is a PITA and the urbanite road hunters and f-ing stupid drunk suburban rednecks make it sketchy), and summers are nice.  I live on the burbs of Portland waaaaay out on the westside and it's a bit different out here compared to Portland proper.  That town is F-ed with all the low income d-bag hipsters and mindless liberal idiots.  And it's not getting better.  The .gov here is pretty bad.  Extremely liberal with majorities in both the senate, HoR and governor's house.  Although I think there are a lot of apathetic conservatives that don't vote because it doesn't matter, but I think that is a changing.  Also, part of the problem in the last election was that they ran a ballot measure to legalize weed so a lot of idiots that wouldn't have other wise voted got off their butts and elected a bunch of idiots.  I could go on and on, but unless there is a huge catalyst that starts a huge trend away from liberalism we are screwed.  On another note, taxes here suck and everyone loves to vote in more taxes almost every chance they get.  We don't have sales tax but the income and property taxes are pretty bad.  Overall I love the geography of OR.  It is awesome.  Its the left leaning idiots that ruin it.

Former Oregon resident.

The good:  Awesome people.  Even the liberals are cool.  No sales tax.  You can drive 45 min out of Portland and be in literal wilderness.  The scenery is beautiful.  If hunting and fishing is your thing, welcome to paradise.  Just be prepared hunting is a learning curve in OR.  No sales tax is pretty awesome.  Lots of good beer and food.  You can make bank if you're in the right industry.

The bad:  It's a blue state.  Income tax is 10%...that sucks balls.  Housing prices are fucking obscene.  Economy is pretty limited to certain jobs/industries.  Most houses don't have central air  It gets hot in the summer and no central air sucks.  Oregon is a little stuck on their beer.  They have good IPA's, but they don't understand there are more beers out there other than IPA's.

If you like the west coast lifestyle you'll be happy.  If you like a more midwest paced lifestyle you might sing yourself wanting.

Oregon is a great state with wonderful people.  My wife and I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to live in OR.  In the end it just wasn't for us.

Plenty of gun people here, we just don't advertise it. NFA stuff too
Housing is expensive, but your home actually goes up in value.

Fishing, hunting, beach, mountains all close.

To many beers to choose from.

Mountains / Rivers everywhere.


A few years ago we looked at TX, AZ, etc...Since we had been here for 40 years. Way to hot, humid, insects that bite and sting. Stale housing markets.

This hits it spot on.

am 35 and have lived here since I was 3.  It is sad to see what OR has turned into.  

No.

When Tom McCall was Governor he let the Cali people know it was OK for them to come here and enjoy the State,
spend their money, and pick up their trash, and keep going up to Seattle.

Later in the summer he put a map on the TV showing the routes to take going up I-5 then turn right
to Nevada and up into Idaho, then up and over into Wa. "Pls don't even come here."

On the Coast in Curry County they submitted a Petition to go on the Ballot to be able to shoot every 3rd tourist.
The Sheriff of Curry Cty had his snipers 'terminate w/ o Prejudice' an RVN Vet.
That was in the early 70s.


Well it has sure changed and Sortafast is spot on.

But it has become the way it is because of too many folks moving here.
And it is a ZOO in the Portland Metro area.

The weather is a drawback if Wetness is an issue.

If you have your economic gig in order then you have a variety of locales to choose from
ranging from w/ high desert to rain forest environs.

On the western side you typically wake up to cloudy skies and/ or rain.
Eastern side, well, there is something to be said for waking up to sunshine.


The Legislature just perpetrated massive Fraud and felonious acts getting SB 941 rammed thru.
[no pvt FTF sales, w/ family exceptions]

But THEY have a thingy that says they don't have to obey any laws when THEY are in session MAKING NEW LAWS.

Other than that it ain't too bad.

My moms family has lived here all my life, I found an old news paper from '77 or '78 with an article about my uncle in it, he was wearing a hat that said something like "Oregon Border Patrol" on it. Man, back in the old days there sure was some hatred towards californians here. I know when we moved here we knew to change our license plates FIRST so people wouldn't know we were from CA. It was really odd, even after that, for at least a few years everybody would ask "where are you from", one guy at a gas station walks right up to my window and gos "you ain't from 'round here, are you?" WTF? JUST LIKE DELIVERANCE!

We don't have to ask anymore.  Californians just love to fucking tell you how long ago they moved up here, then go right into all the stuff about Oregon that was better in California.  Hell, you can see it in this thread even.

East of the Cascade Mountains people are generally conservative, and the weather is relatively dry.

Deer hunting (rifle) is by lottery, but there are good places to hunt mule deer, cougar, bear, and elk.  The fishing out here is good on the Columbia and Umatilla rivers for Steelhead and Salmon.

Unfortunately we have the communists on the west side of the state passing laws that restrict our rights (and not just our 2A rights).

Land on the east side is relatively inexpensive, and there are jobs available for all skill levels.

It is legal to hunt game animals with a suppressor here too.

I was Born in SW Washington and spent a good amount of time living in the Portland metro area, but I have lived all over the world in my time in the Military, I left OR for good almost 20 years ago and went to Western Montana and have never looked back, Western Montana has all of the benefits of OR as far as Mountains, trees, hunting, fishing and I don't miss the Coast!  Gun laws here in Montana are very easy to get a long with, no real threats to anything to do with guns, we have one of the highest per capita gun ownerships in the country.

The hunting, fishing and camping environment is second to none and compared to the rest of the country, our housing and land prices are still pretty reasonable, if we didn't have family in OR, I would probably never step foot in that state again.  Washington either, to liberal and restrictive for my taste, I love it here in Montana, heck, instead of having to go to the range on Christmas morning, I just stepped out the front door to test my new AR, I own a couple of fully autos and can touch them off here at the house with no problems at all either, just a much calmer quieter place to live than there.