Colorado’s Democratic-controlled House on Sunday passed a bill that would ban the sale and transfer of semiautomatic firearms, a major step for the legislation after roughly the same bill was swiftly killed by Democrats last year.
The bill, which passed on a 35-27 vote, is now on its way to the Democratic-led state Senate. If it passes there, it could bring Colorado in line with 10 other states — including California, New York and Illinois — that have prohibitions on semiautomatic guns.
But even in a state plagued by some of the nation’s worst mass shootings, such legislation faces headwinds.
Colorado’s political history is purple, shifting blue only recently. The bill’s chances of success in the state Senate are lower than they were in the House, where Democrats have a 46-19 majority and a bigger far-left flank. Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, has indicated his wariness over such a ban.
This will get struck down, and it’ll be the one thing I agree with when it does. You can’t just make everything except bolt-action rifles illegal. Semi-automatic firearms encompasses 99% of what people use for self defense in America. This is a clear violation of rights.
Right or wrong it’s a constitutional right for a reason, and that reason has nothing to do with hunting.
Similar to GOP and abortion, dems need to drop this fight. Let’s fix healthcare and save/improve more lives than almost everything else you could spend time on.
I agree with you wholeheartedly.
I would prefer much stronger gun control laws and I still agree with you. There are better fights to fight and more likely to win. This feels like empty posturing in an election year.
It is my CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to own a ROCKET LAUNCHER! You CAN’T Discriminate between Firearms! Also TRANS PEOPLE shouldn’t get Free Speech!
Keep shadowboxing those straw men buddy. It’s definitely working out well for you.
Agreed. The 2A is a right, full stop. Doesn’t matter if you or I like it, the courts agree, and have historically.
You’ll get a dozen dumb arguments, but none will address the fact of the 2A. And there’s no way it gets overturned given our amendment procedures.
This is actually a pretty dumb stunt. It’s going to lose in court, zero doubt. And now there’s more precedence.
Lever-Action FTW! ;)
Guess I’ll have to go chain-fed
Theyre used a lot more for homicides than for self defense
A lot more than what? Bolt action? Yes, because as the parent said, nearly all guns are semi auto.
A lot more than for self defense
But what are they used more than?
I disagree but this is the phrase in question:
more for homicides than for self defense
Take your time. Parse each word carefully.
I said more for not more than
Agreed! It’s UNCONSTITUTIONAL to have ANY form of Regulation on Arms! Why is it ILLEGAL for me to not be able to own a Grenade Launcher? UNCONSTITUTIONAL!
you CAN own a Grenade Launcher. you just have to jump through ATF hoops and pay hella tax.
Guess it isn’t a right in that case. Last time I checked I don’t have to pay money and fill out paperwork to express my political opinions.
What you’re describing is an infringement on a right.
Your use of randomly capitalized words does not, at all, make you look like a child screaming because his mom said no McDonalds. Definitely not.
I mean, it’d be kind of fun…
You can’t just make everything except bolt-action rifles illegal.
Britain did.
And if we’re going on the intent of the founders, they mostly had muzzle-loaders in mind. They certainly didn’t consider automatic weapons able to fire huge amounts of bullets extremely quickly.
Britain doesn’t have a 2nd Amendment.
Now, if you want to repeal it, sure, there’s a process for that…
Start by getting 290 votes in the House. The same body that struggles to get a simple 218 vote majority to decide who their own leader is.
Then you get 67 votes in the Senate. The same body that struggles to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
Then, assuming you get all that, you need ratification from 38 states. In 2020, Biden and Trump split the states 25/25. So you need ALL the Biden states (good luck getting Georgia!) and 13 Trump states. For every Biden state you lose, you need +1 Trump state.
Unless you just have a sensible court that don’t claim to be “Originalists” while at the same time ignoring the fact that the arms the founders were think of were not ones that didn’t exist at the time.
Email and Twitter didn’t exist at the time either, but they are still protected under the First and Fourth Amendments. Cell phones with unlock codes didn’t exist, but they’re still covered under the Fourth Amendment That’s a spurious argument that holds zero merit.
The Second Amendment might not be something you like, but modern firearms are ABSOLUTELY covered. The second amendment must be altered or removed from the Constitution to come even close to what you’re asking. And that process was explained to you up the thread a little
And yet “originalist” judges say that we need to consider what the founders meant. Except, apparently, when it comes to one half of one amendment.
Well, then you need to spend 50 years dedicated to changing the makeup of the Court the way the Republicans did with Roe… see you in 2074! Well, not me PERSONALLY, but you get the idea. ;)
I’ll give up my guns when the cops do it first.
I hope you can fight!
You gonna win a shootout with cops?
You ever seen cops shoot?
I’ve seen a bunch of 'em get DQ’d from matches for being unsafe, or drop out when it was clear their scores were trash.
they’ve got a pretty good kda ratio
They use hacks like ESP and wallhacks.
In all seriousness, though, it’s only because they always outnumber and have more resources than the person/people that they are in a shootout with. Not because they are better with firearms than an average gun owner who also trains with their firearm.
and have more resources than the person/people that they are in a shootout with.
Yeah, and that’s what you’re up against thinking your guns are keeping the government in check.
…And yet, when cops see protestors that are as heavily armed as they are, historically they suddenly get very, very respectful. When the Proud Man-Children discover that the BLM protestors are armed and disciplined, they suddenly lose all their courage. Cops suddenly get really, really nervous when they realize that if they start shit, they aren’t going to have a numerical advantage. When you’ve got one suspect and 20 cops though?
Cops aren’t there to protect or serve the people; they’re there to protect and serve the status quo.
But damn, people sure do hop on cops’ dicks whenever someone says they might want to be able to protect themselves rather than hoping that cops will do it.
Gun grabbers will say they don’t trust police and then say they’re the only ones who should be armed in the same paragraph. It’s wild.
I think most examples of armed protests in the US are on the side of police. But US police are also an example of America’s problem with too many guns, they kill way too many people and should also have fewer guns.
The goal isn’t to beat the cops. It’s to defend against neonazis.
Do you think the cops are gonna disarm neonazis? Or will they just use gun bans as an excuse to murder more black people?
Do you think the cops are gonna disarm neonazis? Or will they just use gun bans as an excuse to murder more black people?
You think black people with firearms are less likely to be shot by police?
The goal isn’t to beat the cops. It’s to defend against neonazis.
How’s that going? Because from the outside, it looks like this.
Do you not think cops are more likely to kill black people if there’s a gun ban regardless whether they are armed?
Yes, I’m well aware of how it looks. They are trying to use public massacres to ignite a civil war. Of course it’s horrible.
And yet we do almost nothing to prosecute their talking heads who incite those same shootings and the billionaires who fund their rallies. Because hate speech is still somehow free speech. We need to clean up the loopholes in the first amendment before addressing the second.
Trump is campaigning to become the next fuhrer, not president, yet you dingalings are bound and determined to make sure that we’re disarmed in advance. How stupid is that?
Do you not think cops are more likely to kill black people if there’s a gun ban regardless whether they are armed?
That’s some wicked grammar there, but… no? Why would the cops kill less black people if specific firearms are banned?
They are trying to use school shootings to ignite a civil war.
What?
Also, I feel Americans need to see this, and maybe consider that all these children dying isn’t necessary for their hobby or ‘self defense’ claims:
That means the USA has 800 times the rare of firearms deaths as the UK. So when this mysterious ‘civil war’ happens, how many children will have died so that you can have that semi-auto AR-15 to fight off the drones of the American military, or the armoured vehicles of your cops?
Instead of pretending One Man With A Gun is going to do something, maybe try voting locally. Maybe try de-arming your cops?
Yes. Cops have always used gun bans as an excuse to kill more black people, regardless whether or not they are armed.
Yes. They are trying to use school shootings to ignite a civil war. It’s in their manifestos they leave behind. They say so on their forums. The same talking heads who formented the insurrection are same ones who encourage incels to commit public massacres, then deny all culpability immediately after. They even claim the shootings never happened.
Yes. They are trying to use school shootings to ignite a civil war. It’s in their manifestos they leave behind. They say so on their forums. The same talking heads who formented the insurrection are same ones who encourage incels to commit public massacres, then deny all culpability immediately after. They even claim the shootings never happened.
You think this is a push, from the NRA amongst others, to get people to… ban specific firearms? How exactly does banning semi-auto firearms prevent your Totally-Going-To-Work-Later uprising?
[Because congratulations, your efforts to keep your firearms only cost the lives of 4,357 children (ages 1-19 years old) in the U.S. in 2020.
By comparison, motor-vehicle deaths accounted for 4,112 deaths in that age range.](https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/03/29/guns-leading-deaths-children-us/)
Guns dont defend shit. We have all the guns, its not going well. A gun ban at least slows down supply. And starts a long path to becoming like developed countries that arent murderous gun nuts like we are.
It’s going better here than it is in Myanmar or Gaza.
How’s that weapons ban going for Gaza?
Ukraine lets their citizens have weapons now too.
Tell you what. How about you pass a law to disarm people based on their hateful ideologies FIRST. Make Nazism illegal, then disarm, prosecute, and imprison the neonazis, by force of law. They are currently trying to ignite a new Civil War against America, yet you want to disarm the rest of us in the face of that.
Fix that, then we can discuss disarming law abiding citizens.
You gonna address the question I asked? Cops only use gun bans as an excuse to kill more black people.
Imagine trusting a neoliberal government to take the guns away from those leftists deem dangerous. You really don’t see how that might go awry?
I don’t see you offering a better suggestion.
I didn’t think I needed to state the obvious: armed leftists are much more difficult to oppress.
You actually downvoted the idea of making Nazism illegal. How does that make you feel?
Like I’m in a different category than the Nazis, who rounded up and murdered Communists and Trade Unionists during the Holocaust.
Read a book dude. History is well-documented.
And yet you downvoted the suggestion of making Nazism illegal. You’ve read books, and despite that, still thought that banning Nazism was a bad idea.
I think youd have a hard time defining and identifying nazis in legal terms.
And i dont trust any gun owner to be a law abiding citizen, we’re all animals that can get very emotional. And we have the results of that in our horrendous homicide rate.
Really? Because Germany managed it. Nazism is illegal there. They prosecute anyone who professes Nazi ideas. I don’t care how hard it would be. You think confiscating all the guns is easier?
I don’t care who you trust. I care that this nation is too foolish and cowardly to root out the cancer it has harbored since long before it was founded. Ban sympathy for the Confederacy. Ban Nazi ideology. Prosecute those who profess it. Ruin those who fund them. Cleanse the police departments of all the Nazi cops. We will never be free of them until the day we make their ideologies illegal.
Until then, piss off trying to disarm the millions of people who only wish to defend their homes from exactly those people pushing for civil war.
Gee whiz, you sure don’t want to address the fact that cops only use gun bans as an excuse to murder black people.
just a heads up, west germany famously integrated nazis into the government and still has them to this day.
I would love to do how Germany does, no one gets a gun.
Most of their nazi ban entails antisemitism, which i dont think covers a lot of people you wouldnt want to have guns. It also entails self labeling nazis, people wearing nazi uniforms, using swastikas, etc. Again, i dont think thats gonna cover most of the people youd want it to. Its better than nothing and id support it here, but its not gonna be very effective at keeping guns away from people with various nazi beliefs.
Gee whiz, you sure don’t want to address the fact that cops only use gun bans as an excuse to murder black people.
What gun bans?
There a better way: if you don’t have a valid reason* to have a gun, you can’t have it. If you have a valid reason* but not to carry it, you can’t carry it and you can only use it in a target range.
- Hunting, basically.
All I see is you not thinking about anything I’ve said.
Many countries do almost what I said and are safer that the US by far.
You rooting for the fascists for a reason?
When did that happen?
You called for disarmament of the people, even Marx thought that was a stupid idea
Yeah, most of the least fascist countries in the world dont have very armed people
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He’s just gonna be a punk to the gangbangers like in El Salvador before the crackdown.
Im just always flabbergasted when ever someone thinks theyre keeping the government in line with their civilian arms. Like they suddenly dont know what kinda firepower the US government has.
How’d Afghanistan go?
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It’s always obvious when someone has watched every Rambo movie, but has never been within 10 miles of a military base. Good luck to them…
If it passes there, it could bring Colorado in line with 10 other states — including California, New York and Illinois — that have prohibitions on semiautomatic guns.
Zero states ban semiautomatic firearms.
It’s an AWB, yes, some states do ban some semi-auto guns.
Yeah but AW is a meaningless label that means whatever the specific AWB says it means, AFAIK none of the states flat out prohibit the sale of all semiautomatic firearms, correct?
The co bill does ban all semi rifles.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I mean CO would be the first to do that, correct? Honest question.
Supreme Court shoots it down in 3-2-1…
The Heller ruling in 2008 already decided this.
Washington D.C. had effectively banned pistols, the court ruled then:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/570/
“As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate, the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right. The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights,[Footnote 27] banning from the home “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,” 478 F. 3d, at 400, would fail constitutional muster.”
So, no, you can’t ban an entire class of weapon.
The whole bit about being primarily used for a lawful purpose seems important.
.
Why? Does any other right depend on that?
Maybe it isn’t a right and maybe it was a temporary provision for a frontier society to quickly setup a temporary army to deal with slave revolts.
So, no, you can’t ban an entire class of weapon.
I don’t know about that. In general, rocket-propelled weapons and land mines are not legal for ownership. You even need special dispensation to own a fully automatic machine gun.
Those are explosives, completely different deal from firearms. Supreme court ruled on that too, Caetano, 2016:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/577/411/
“The Second Amendment covers all weapons that may be defined as ‘bearable arms,’ even if they did not exist when the Bill of Rights was drafted and are not commonly used in warfare."
Caetano is really my favorite of these rulings because it started out having nothing to do with guns.
Woman, scared of her ex, bought a stun gun for protection. Massachusetts arrested her, stated “stun guns didn’t exist back then, no 2nd Amendment right to a stun gun.”
Court “um, actually’d” them pretty hard.
So, you can’t ban a class of gun (Heller, 2008) and you can’t ban a bearable arm just because it didn’t exist 200 years ago (Caetano, 2016.)
And the court has only gotten MORE conservative since then, not less. :( This new ban is going to go nowhere fast, shame Colorado taxpayers are going to have to pay for a losing case.
You said ‘weapons,’ not ‘guns.’ If you meant guns, that would be a different issue. However, even there, fully-automatic machine guns are not generally available with a simple background check like other guns. You have to apply for a federal license to get them. So they are treated quite differently.
No, but as noted above, there IS a path to legal machine gun ownership, it’s just slightly more involved and expensive.
So restricted to the wealthy?
Pretty much, it’s a tax on the poors. They’ll have to be satisfied with bump stocks and hellfire triggers.
I would personally argue that expanding that to other guns would be a huge step up from what we have now. It might even prevent some mass shootings.
It could, but as with the machine gun ban, it needs to be done at a Federal level.
Fuck the pooooooooooor
Do you think maybe the fact that you are suggesting that poor people need guns to protect themselves is indicative of a much bigger problem?
This just seems like a stupid time to be pressing legislation like this. I don’t even disagree with it myself. I just think it’s idiotic from a political perspective. The Dems can see the GoP struggling with the fall out of Roe v. Wade, and they still want to step into this fight now?
Step in and lose as it’s swiftly struck down by one of the most conservative courts in history.
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed
You don’t have to be a conservative to recognize it’s a violation of the 2nd amendment.
Man people really love to drop off the first half of that sentence when quoting the second amendment.
Who’s being denied access to arms? It doesn’t say you get any firearm you want and there’s plenty of precedent keeping certain firearms regulated.
Also, which militia are you a member of, specifically?
It doesn’t say you get any firearm
It says shall not be infringed which means what it says. There is no prescription for what is allowed but instead the opposite. The government cannot and should not prevent the population from arming itself. If people think that’s disagreeable then they should amend the constitution not defy it.
The constitution was written by people who had just overthrown a government. This amendment wasn’t written to protect the rights of hunters. It’s specifically to enable the people to take control if the government gets out hand.
Also, which militia are you a member of, specifically?
Do you think the US would allow a militia to exist when it’s entire purpose is to be a check on government power?
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Also the idea that the founding fathers wrote down the bill of rights, still battle weary with fear of future governments is completely false.
The bill of rights was written ten years after the war had been settled, with a significant faction of the founders worried about another revolution.
They had just come out of the Articles of Confederation, a government that had no authority to tax or raise an army. The second amendment was written to address specifically that issue. That we need a militia to defend the country since we really can’t do it any other way, and don’t want to. So might as well let farmers have guns, much to the dismay of the federalists.
The amendment specifically states that it’s there to aid the common defense.
You really aught to read the entire amendment.
Imagine still wanting gun control people after January 6th 2021 and the police violence of the George floydd protests.
We’re on our own, stop hiding your heads in the sand.
The only 2021 protests where people weren’t getting their eyes shot out by pepperballs and beanbags were the ones where people were armed. Message fucking received.
This will never get past the Supreme Court because it is blatantly unconstitutional.
Nice job wasting money posturing for your base, colorado democrats.
You’re just like the grifters in florida.
People would still have access to the OG weapons that the Constitution was talking about?
Cool I can have a 12 pound cannon and grape shot then?
Actually yes. I used to have one. Restored it for civil war reenactments. We would shoot pumpkins with it.
As long as it’s not concealed on your person.
Yeah I definitely remember the words “smoothbore musket” in the 2A. People thinking this law is a good idea have huge “but I love my local PD, they’re so helpful and I never get so much as a ticket, just flirt a little” energy.
I’ll take that deal if we can replace cops with militias too.
Conservatives are demanding the widespread oppression and even slaughter of our nation’s most vulnerable groups and the best we can come up with is “let’s disarm ourselves”. FFS
Why not outlaw far-right ideologies like nazism? The conservatives would oppose that too, but it’s something all the normal people can agree on.
While not opposed to the last statement it would be a terrible idea in the real world with corrupt government
Because of the 1st amendment. Kind of the foundation of the USA outside money.
I think you’re missing the hyperbole in their statement. They’re suggesting they’re both misguided ideas.
We could also argue, but the 2nd Amendment protects the 1st.Sounds like a loophole in the 1st amendment that needs fixing.
If the government ever decides to take up arms against us, we are already screwed even with the massive oversupply of civilian weapons of war.
Isn’t that like… most guns people actually use other than some shotguns and some handguns? And even then, why you would use a pump action over a semi-automatic shotgun is beyond me…
If only Americans could be like the Swiss, y’all could have your guns and none of the problems.
Our ability to self govern is non-existent. We can’t even put shopping carts in the return carousel. We definitely won’t take gun ownership seriously.
You have a carousel to return your shopping carts and you still don’t put them back 😱
Here we just go to the place they’re stored and put the chain back in, and we get our coin / token back.
Yeah, and we have people that mess with them.
My .22 varmint rifle is semiauto. They take those too?
Sounds like it’s only a ban on sale and transfer. Keep that gun.
I is. It was a birfday giff from ma mamaw
I don’t expect this to go over well with the federal supreme court…
I first read they ban semiautomatic fire alarms, and was wondering why and what even a semiautomatic fire alarm is
I honestly don’t think action matters as much as magazine size. You could build a high capacity lever action and rack up one hell of a body count.
Didnt the bell tower shooter in Texas use a bolt action rifle?
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This still allows bolt action for hunting, revolvers and shotguns for defense. That should be plenty. If you’re spraying a dozen+ rounds in your own home for defense you’re more of a danger than an intruder at that point.
Democrats last year passed and Polis signed into law four less-expansive gun control bills. Those included raising the age for buying any gun from 18 to 21; establishing a three-day waiting period between the purchase and receipt of a gun; strengthening the state’s red flag law; and rolling back some legal protections for the firearms industry, exposing it to lawsuits from the victims of gun violence.
Common-sense gun regulation.
Republicans decried the legislation as an onerous encroachment on the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. They argued that mental illness and people who do not value life — not guns — are the issues that should be addressed. People with ill intent can use other weapons, such as knives, to harm others, they argued.
Lol. And yet healthcare is something Republicans fight against constantly. And “people who do not value life” is great from the forced-birth and no social safety nets crowd.
Democrats responded that semiautomatic weapons can cause much more damage in a short period of time.
Exactly. If you’re incredibly viscous and lucky you can get a lot of people, but rarely double digits with a hand-held blade. With a semi-automatic rifle you can get dozens with someone untrained. And we’ve seen it happen. Multiple times.
.
