Massacres spur demands for tighter state restrictions

For the second time in less than a week, a 21yearold man used a gun purchased legally in the United States to massacre people simply working or visiting a business. The mass shootings in Colorado and Georgia are giving new urgency to state efforts to enact gun restrictions, even while showing how hard it can be to prevent a tragedy.

A gunman opened fire March 22 at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., with a weapon that resembles an AR15 rifle, killing 10 people before he was captured. He bought the Ruger AR556 pistol on March 16, the same day another 21yearold man on the other side of the country killed eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, at Atlantaarea massage businesses.

President Biden called for action on gun reform after the two mass shootings, and U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, who represents Boulder, asked Biden to ban imported semiautomatic weapons and highcapacity magazines. But legislation in Congress faces an uphill climb, and it’s been more than two decades since any major federal gun control laws have passed.

That means most significant gun legislation has been left to the states, including Colorado, where lawmakers have passed gun control laws in recent years. But the suspect in the supermarket shooting, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, still could legally buy a firearm, keep it despite concerns about his mental state and open fire in a town that had tried to ban assaultstyle weapons.

That’s led to calls for stronger action from the state, and Democratic leaders are listening. Still, support for gun rights is strong in parts of Colorado, and Second Amendment advocates argue new restrictions are not the answer.

An ordinance in the city of Boulder that banned assaultstyle weapons was struck down in court just days before the shooting because of a state law that bars local leaders from making their own gun rules. Now, state Senate Majority Leader Stephen Fenberg is drafting a bill to repeal that law.

“There’s not one answer to this problem. It has to be a complex and comprehensive set of policies because every tragedy is different,” he said.

To keep guns away from people in crisis, gun control activists say Colorado should create a waiting period. Both Colorado and Georgia, like the majority of states, allow people to get a gun right away. In the Atlanta area, the shooting happened just hours after the purchase.

Waitingperiod legislation is already in the works in Colorado, and Georgia Democrats plan to introduce a measure that would require people to wait five days between buying a gun and getting it, state Rep. David Wilkerson has said. And with gun sales nationwide having surged to record levels last year, lawmakers in at least four other states have proposed creating or expanding waiting periods.