Colo. gun debate highlights divide even among Democrats
Semiautomatic weapons ban unlikely to pass
DENVER — In a vast hall of Colorado’s Capitol, hundreds sat between columns for a hearing Wednesday on a sweeping bill to ban semiautomatic firearms months after a mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs — the latest in the state’s long history of massacres.
Representative Elisabeth Epps, the bill’s sponsor, wiped tears from her eyes during her opening remarks as she appealed to her fellow Democrats — who control the state’s legislature and are the bill’s only hurdle — to pass the ban.
“Which school was it when you realized, ‘Babies? We aren’t going to ban them now?’” said Epps. “I’m scared of what it says about us, if when there are 69 members of my party in the body, we don’t run this bill.”
The Legislature has passed a package of narrower gun control measures that is expected to be signed by the state’s governor — more closely aligning Colorado with the liberal strongholds of California and New York. But the sweeping ban on semiautomatic firearms faces much stiffer odds and illustrates that even Democratic-controlled state houses don’t have free rein on overhauling laws rooted deep in American culture.
“I think we’ve discovered the edge and the limit of how progressive this state wants to be,” Representative Mike Lynch, the Republican House minority leader, said in a press conference outside the hearing.
Epps said the bill is likely to be significantly pared back to effectively ban bump stocks — a firearm attachment that increases the rate of fire — a concession to other Democrats.
Over 500 people signed up to testify at the proposal’s first hearing — the vast majority in opposition to the ban — and tensions rose as the hearing got underway.
The other gun-control proposals that have found broad Democratic support include strengthening red-flag laws, raising the firearm purchasing age to 21, opening the gun industry up to legal liability, and installing a three-day waiting period after buying a gun.
In one of the first testimonies of the hearing, Austin Hein of the National Association for Gun Rights said none of the bills will do “anything to address the root cause of the mental health, overly medicated children in fatherless homes and gun-free zones that are plaguing our state.”
Hein added that, particularly the semiautomatic ban, which includes a number of pistols and shotguns, “will leave law-abiding citizens defenseless to the alarming rise of violent crime caused by the progressive criminal justice reform.”
Hein vowed to lodge a lawsuit before the ink dries on any such bill that is passed.
Mark Shusterman, a member of the band Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, pushed back in testimony Wednesday.
“I have a half-dozen friends affected directly by an assault weapon, and I know exactly zero people that have defended themselves with a firearm of any kind,” he said.
Colorado has suffered some of the nation’s most notorious massacres, including 13 killed in 1999 at Columbine High School, 12 killed in 2012 at an Aurora movie theater, 10 killed in 2021 at a Boulder supermarket, and five killed last November at a Colorado Springs gay nightclub.
Just last month, after a student shot two administrators in a Denver high school, chanting students and teachers filled Colorado’s Capitol demanding that gun control laws be passed.
The Capitol’s halls were filled with high schoolers locked in debate with lawmakers. Others lay on the marble floors in front of Governor Jared Polis’s office until he appeared to hear their grievances. One student who disrupted proceedings in the House was carried out by law enforcement.
While deeply Democratic states such as California, New York, and Massachusetts have restricted semiautomatic rifles, the proposal in Colorado has revealed divides even among Democrats and incited ongoing contention between the urban and rural parts of the state.