A couple of things:
1) WTF with the grenade launchers lately?!? And then if we say something about their lack of understanding, we're "deflecting from the issue." WTF do you think talking about grenade launchers is doing, you morons?
2) This was apparently pushed to the AG by a "Portland clergy group". They could easily get all the signatures they need just in Portland. So something I thought about was - what if, in order to get something on the ballot, you not only needed the signatures, but you needed signatures from every county in the state in some proportion related to county population? Then if say, you had a 20 county state and you got the required signatures from 11 or more counties, you could get the initiative on the ballot. So for this initiative you might need (for the OR example) 10,000 signatures from Multnomah County, which would be easy, but also 100 signatures from Grant County, which might be impossible.
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/04/oregon_attorney_general_drafts.html
Anti gunners will anti gun.
Skipping ahead to the bolded part, so it's a slight thread hijack.
Several libertarian things I've read (including fiction and non fiction) have mentioned forms of this up to and including unanimous support for items to pass legislatures. The reasoning being that even in a representative government, a slim margin of the majority passing an initiative of some sort, passed by legislators who were elected by a slim majority of voters, means that in reality the majority never consented to said initiative.
For items to get on a ballot by signature, your idea is brilliant. I saw a population map of the state of Virginia, which showed that more than half the population is only in about 7 counties total. It would be easy to get anti-gun ballot initiative signatures in many of those counties, even though the rest of the state would never support such trash.