Colorado Democrats formally unveiled their marquee firearm legislation Thursday, setting into motion plans they’ve previewed for months and what could be session-defining fights over gun rights and access.
The four bills form the primary thrust of the legislature’s landmark gun-safety effort, though lawmakers have said other proposals — including an assault weapon ban and ghost gun regulations — are still in the works.
The package described Thursday would require a person be 21 before they can have or purchase a gun, and would require a three-day waiting period between buying and possessing the weapon. The proposals would also expand who can use the state’s red-flag law and roll back legal protections for gun manufacturers and sellers.
“Our guiding principle while crafting these pieces of legislation has been very, very simple: What can we do right now that will save the most lives in Colorado tomorrow?” said Senate President Steve Fenberg, who’s co-sponsoring the red-flag bill with Centennial Democrat Sen. Tom Sullivan.
Democrats, who won a super-majority in the House and a near super-majority Senate, are in a “golden moment” to address gun violence, said Rep. Meg Froelich. She described Colorado as being behind other states on gun control and said the four bills represent the most prepared, evidence-based approaches. Lawmakers want to balance attention between daily gun violence, she said, while being appropriately reactive to mass shootings, like the Nov.19 shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs that left five dead.
That shooting intensified focus on the state’s extreme risk protection order, or red flag, law. It allows local law enforcement to petition for a person’s firearms to be temporarily confiscated if the person is judged to be a threat to themselves or others. El Paso County law enforcement was aware that the Club Q suspect had threatened to commit a mass shooting, and they’ve received criticism — including from some lawmakers — for not doing more before the November attack.
The bill announced Thursday would allow more people — including district attorneys, educators and certain health care providers — to file for an extreme risk protection order, the formal name for the red flag law’s use.
Gov. Jared Polis, who called for an examination of the red-flag law after Club Q, said in a statement Thursday that he’s also “encouraged by the general direction around waiting periods, and raising the age to 21 for gun purchases. ”
Sullivan, whose son Alex was killed in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting, described how the shooter’s therapist was unable to intervene before the attack. Sullivan marks the weekly anniversary of the tragedy every Friday in the Senate. He said it would continue to drive his legislative efforts.
“I want the people of Colorado to remember,” Sullivan said, pausing to gather his emotions, “that I will never stop in my quest to save the life of another Coloradan from the public health crisis that is gun violence. This bill is just that type of legislation that can help all of us in the work we have been asked to do.”
The “suite of bills,” as Fenberg described the gun legislation, would also remove specific protections that insulate gun sellers and manufacturers from civil lawsuits in Colorado. Democrats have described the state’s protections for those organizations as “overly broad” and pointed to an Aurora shooting victim’s parents, who were ordered to pay more than $200,000 in attorneys fees after an unsuccessful lawsuit.
Dr. Emmy Betz, director of the Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said it’s hard to prejudge the efficacy of the proposals. There’s been limited federal funding for gun violence prevention research, she said, and the different regulations and characteristics of states and communities make it hard to suss out an individual policy’s effects.
For example, she said, there’s some evidence that a minimum age for firearm possession can help prevent youth suicide, but she hasn’t seen evidence it affects homicide or mass shooting rates.
But, she continued, “just because there’s not evidence that something works, it doesn’t mean something won’t work.”
Betz, who does not advocate for policy solutions, said it’s also important to include a diversity of viewpoints and appreciate that one person’s safety measure may make another feel less safe. Changes should be iterative, with policymakers coming back and seeing what works, what doesn’t and what needs tweaking, she said.
Policy needs to be in conjunction with other programs, such as suicide prevention and youth outreach. She has a particular interest in how changes to infrastructure, such as turning a vacant lot into a community park, diminish overall violence in an area.
“It’s really important to recognize the violence that is happening right now, no one wants it, whether it’s mass shootings or suicide or the horrible shootings that happen on a daily basis predominately in urban areas,” Betz said. “No one wants them, but there’s no magic cure. Policy alone isn’t going to fix it.”
Interruptions and “vigorous” opposition
Thursday’s announcement was interrupted first by fire alarms and later by a gun rights activist who challenged the proposals’ legality.
The first fire alarm rang as Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat, described racing to a gun shop to beg the owner not to sell a firearm to her son, who was in a mental health crisis. Amabile is co-sponsoring the waiting-period bill, which is intended to prevent suicides and give a crucial “cooling off” period between crisis and act.
The alarm, which the Colorado State Patrol attributed to a technical issue, prompted a short evacuation of the entire Capitol.
A second alarm rang 10 minutes after the event restarted, as Jane Dougherty, whose sister was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting, spoke in support of the bills. Dougherty did not stop speaking, and the press conference continued as lights flashed in the surrounding corridors.
“These four bills introduced today are critical to continuing the work to save lives, and I am so grateful for the legislators that are sponsoring these important bills,” she said.
Opposition to the package is certain. Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, a gun rights organization that has already pledged to fight gun control legislation in court, reiterated that threat Thursday: The group’s executive director, Taylor Rhodes, interjected to ask lawmakers about the legality of the proposals. As Fenberg tried to move on, Rhodes and Sullivan promised to see each other in court.
Rhodes later said his group plans to turn the building “into a circus” over the bills.
House Minority Leader Mike Lynch, a Wellington Republican, said that disruptive tactics aren’t part of his caucus’s plan and that he won’t promote that kind of behavior. But he pledged as much a fight as his minority can muster.
“You will see as vigorous of an opposition to this as any legislation you’ve seen come through here,” Lynch said.
Last year, House Republicans mounted a 24-hour filibuster against the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which codified the right to an abortion in state law. Lynch said the proposed gun legislation was as serious as abortion to his members’ constituents.
“(Democrats) mentioned this as a monumental, historic day for Colorado, and a lot of me agrees with that,” Lynch said shortly after the proposals were introduced. “Because this is the biggest single unified effort to attack our Second Amendment rights that we’ve seen, I think, probably in Colorado history.”
Lynch also noted the “unspeakable tragedy” driving some of the Democrats on the bill and didn’t impugn their motives. He instead called it “overreach” in response to such tragedies. His counterpart in the Senate, minority leader Paul Lundeen, said he was concerned about the bills’ constitutionality “and more importantly how these bills will impede Coloradans’ ability to defend themselves and their families amidst this crime crisis in which we find ourselves.”
Lynch said he hadn’t been able to read the just-introduced legislation, but his initial concerns include people losing their right to possess firearms over another’s opinion of their fitness, youths on farms not being able to shoot predators due to the under the 21-and-over proposal and general concerns about personal protection, particularly in rural parts of the state.
Even outside of deliberate opposition, what is sure to be contentious debates and hearings on the proposals have the potential to “gum up the system,” Lynch said, while upping partisan tensions on unrelated issues.
Gun debate has already flared
Recent debate in the Capitol provides a further, more intense preview of the fight to come. Last week, the House considered a bill that would allow county commissioners to ban shooting guns in certain areas. That turned into a lengthy debate on the House floor after pro-gun groups urged Republicans to step up their opposition.
In early February, while advocating for a failed bill that would bar local police from enforcing federal gun control laws, Republican Rep. Ken DeGraaf suggested that the Holocaust and other genocides of the 20th century were enabled by gun control. The Anti-Defamation League has condemned such comparisons as “inappropriate and offensive,” particularly to Holocaust survivors.
During that same debate, Democratic Rep. Kyle Brown asked Kevin Lorusso, a lobbyist with Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, about recent analyses that found that firearms were the leading cause of death for children in the United States. Lorusso said that statistic wasn’t true “if you remove black males in that age group.” Gun deaths among black children, Lorusso claimed, are a “symptom of a different issue.” His comments drew an audible reaction from the room, and the executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners later told Denver 7 that Lorusso “misspoke.”
Rep. Jennifer Bacon, who is co-sponsoring one of the gun control measures, called Lorusso’s comments “incredibly harmful” and said he was “literally saying Black lives don’t matter.”
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