DENVER (AP) — Colorado’s Democratic-controlled Home on Sunday handed a invoice that might ban the sale and switch of semiautomatic firearms, a serious step for the laws after roughly the identical invoice was swiftly killed by Democrats final 12 months.
The invoice, which handed on a 35-27 vote, is now on its option to the Democratic-led state Senate. If it passes there, it might deliver Colorado according to 10 different states — together with California, New York and Illinois — which have prohibitions on semiautomatic weapons.
However even in a state suffering from a number of the nation’s worst mass shootings, such laws faces headwinds.
Colorado’s political historical past is purple, shifting blue solely just lately. The invoice’s possibilities of success within the state Senate are decrease than they have been within the Home, the place Democrats have a 46-19 majority and a much bigger far-left flank. Gov. Jared Polis, additionally a Democrat, has indicated his wariness over such a ban.
Final 12 months, an identical invoice died in committee, with some Democratic lawmakers citing issues over the sweep of a ban and guarantees they made to their constituents to keep away from authorities overreach affecting most gun house owners’ rights.
Democrats final 12 months handed and Polis signed into legislation four less-expansive gun control bills. These included elevating the age for purchasing any gun from 18 to 21; establishing a three-day ready interval between the acquisition and receipt of a gun; strengthening the state’s purple flag legislation; and rolling again some authorized protections for the firearms business, exposing it to lawsuits from the victims of gun violence.
These legal guidelines have been signed months after 5 folks have been killed at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs final 12 months. Quickly, the state will mark the twenty fifth anniversary of the 1999 Columbine Excessive Faculty capturing that killed 13 folks. Different mass shootings in Colorado embody 12 folks killed in 2012 at an Aurora movie show and 10 folks killed in 2021 at a Boulder supermarket.
“That is the state the place the trendy period of the mass capturing started with Columbine,” Democratic Rep. Javier Mabrey mentioned in urging fellow lawmakers to hitch different states that ban semiautomatic weapons.
Republicans decried the laws as an onerous encroachment on the U.S. Structure’s Second Modification. They argued that psychological sickness and individuals who don’t worth life — not weapons — are the problems that ought to be addressed. Individuals with in poor health intent can use different weapons, resembling knives, to hurt others, they argued.
Democrats responded that semiautomatic weapons may cause way more harm in a brief time frame.
“In Aurora, when the shooter walked in that theater and opened fireplace,” Mabrey mentioned, “and in lower than 90 seconds shot up a room full of individuals. That can’t be completed with a knife, that may’t be completed with a knife.”
