- Colorado’s Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has passed a bill that would ban the sale and transfer of semi-automatic firearms.
- The bill passed by a vote of 35-27 and now heads to the Democratic-led state Senate.
- The bill faces challenges in the Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority.
Colorado’s Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill Sunday that would ban the sale and transfer of semi-automatic firearms. It’s a major step forward for the bill after a nearly identical bill was quickly rejected by Democrats last year.
The bill passed by a vote of 35-27 and now heads to the Democratic-led state Senate. If passed, Colorado could join 10 other states, including California, New York and Illinois, that ban semi-automatic weapons.
But such bills also face headwinds in states plagued by some of the nation’s worst mass shootings.
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Colorado’s political history has been purple, but it only recently turned blue. The bill has a lower chance of passing in the state Senate, where Democrats hold a 46-19 majority, than in the far-left-leaning House. Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has also expressed reservations about such a ban.
Visitors stand on the west steps of the Colorado State Capitol on April 23, 2023, in Denver. Colorado’s Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill Sunday that would ban the sale and transfer of semi-automatic firearms. (AP Photo/David Zarbowski, File)
A similar bill died in committee last year, with some Democrats calling for an outright ban and promises made to voters to avoid government overreach that would impact the rights of most gun owners. He cited concerns as the reason.
Polis signed four less sweeping gun control bills that Democrats passed last year. That included raising the age to buy a gun from 18 to 21. He imposes a three-day waiting period between purchasing and receiving a gun. Strengthen state red flag laws. And it rolls back some legal protections for the firearms industry, exposing it to lawsuits from victims of gun violence.
These laws were signed months after five people were murdered at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs last year. The state will soon mark the 25th anniversary of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting that left 13 people dead. Other mass shootings in Colorado include the killing of 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora in 2012 and the killing of 10 at a supermarket in Boulder in 2021.
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“This is the state where the modern era of mass shootings began at Columbine,” Democratic Rep. Javier Mabry said, urging his colleagues to join other states in banning semiautomatic weapons.
Republicans denounced the bill as a troubling violation of the Second Amendment. They argued that mental illness and people who don’t value life are the problem, not guns. They argued that people with malicious intent could use other weapons, such as knives, to harm others.
Democrats responded that semi-automatic weapons could cause far more damage in a shorter period of time.
“In ‘Aurora,’ when the gunman walks into the theater and opens fire, he shoots a room full of people in less than 90 seconds. You can’t do that with a knife, you can’t do that with a gun,” Mabry said. said. knife. “
