The Denver lawmaker sponsoring a proposed ban on the sale or purchase of assault weapons in Colorado floated a significant scale-back of the bill Wednesday morning — a move that acknowledged the uncertainty of an impending committee vote.
But Rep. Elisabeth Epps said a failure to enact a ban would show that the state’s historic Democratic majorities aren’t serious about the policy. As of press time Wednesday night, the House’s Judiciary Committee was still hearing public testimony on the bill as initially drafted.
In a lengthy opening statement to the House Judiciary Committee before hours of often-searing public testimony, the Democratic lawmaker told her colleagues that she was contemplating an amendment that would limit the bill — HB23-1230 — to a ban on bump stocks. Those devices, which allow semi-automatic firearms to be fired continuously, were banned during the Trump administration, but a federal appellate court struck down the prohibition in January.
While the U.S. Justice Department appeals that ruling and the ban remains in effect, Epps told the committee that a bump stock ban in Colorado would provide more assurance in the state.
Still, Epps said she would view an amendment neutering the bill as a loss, given support among Democratic voters for its original intent and the grim drumbeat of mass shootings featuring semi-automatic rifles in Colorado and across America. The current version of the legislation would prohibit the sale, purchase or transfer of weapons that fit a list of specific characteristics described in the bill; it would cover AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles that have been used in recent massacres.
As the committee settled in Wednesday for 12 hours of testimony before an expected vote on whether to advance the bill to the full House, Epps said she didn’t believe there was a path to get the bill out of committee “intact.” During committee hearings on bills, amendments are offered after public testimony concludes and before a final vote. Epps said before testimony began that she was still deciding whether to scale back the bill.
Although Democrats have a 9-4 majority on the committee, House members, including Democrats, have said for weeks that they doubt the measure, as written, would pass to the full chamber.
Committee member and Democratic Rep. Said Sharbini told The Denver Post this month that he didn’t support the bill. Rep. Bob Marshall, another Democrat on the committee, previously declined to comment on his position, and Rep. Marc Snyder, a Colorado Springs Democrat, said he had concerns about the bill’s constitutionality (although he didn’t say this month how he intended to vote).
Epps said she wanted to follow through on a promise to constituents to have lawmakers put votes on the record for issues like this. The bill’s introductory language lists recent mass shootings committed by men wielding assault weapons. It includes Colorado’s own grim tally of tragedies, such as one at an Aurora movie theater in 2012 and another at a Boulder grocery story in 2021. Several supporters of the bill who testified through the course of the day Wednesday said they voted for Democrats so they could pass this policy. One student specifically named Sharbini, Snyder and Marshall and said they would have blood on their hands if they voted no.
“Folks have been asking us to do this for a long time,” Epps told the committee. “That framing is my way of telling you that while it would sadden me, I’m not scared of y’all voting no. I’m scared of us not trying.”
The measure has been among the most contentious considered during the legislature this session, even within the historically large Democratic majorities in the General Assembly. Republican opposition is uniform. Republicans have castigated the bill as government overreach and an infringement upon the Second Amendment, and several gun advocates who spoke at the beginning of Wednesday’s hearing promised to file lawsuits should the bill pass. Democratic leadership in the Capitol has coalesced around other gun reform bills, most of which have passed, amid concerns about the assault weapon bill’s likelihood of success and concerns about its workability.
Epps referred to internal debate around the bill — which prompted an initial cosponsor to remove his name from the bill before it was introduced — during her opening comments and questioned why the bill would die in a chamber where Democrats have a supermajority. She urged listeners to “primary each and every last one of us if we don’t get it done.”
“I’ve long said Democrats aren’t serious about a statewide ban of assault weapons. If we fail, I was right,” Epps said. ” I want to be wrong. I want to be wrong today — if not today, then next year … before the next event that forces us to consider this.”
The committee’s vice chair, Denver Democratic Rep. Jennifer Bacon, called the debate over whether to ban assault weapons “the conversation of our generation.” McCann, who testified in favor of the bill, said it was “beyond comprehension we can’t agree on this.”
Wednesday’s lengthy period of public testimony featured survivors and family members of mass shootings as well as parents, students and activists calling on lawmakers to enact the ban as a way to cut down on the prevalence and violence of the attacks. Jane Dougherty, whose sister died in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, described what the shooter’s AR-15 did to her sister’s body, and Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said the 20 first-graders killed in that massacre were “blown apart.”
Republicans and opponents, who said the bill would do little to help what they described as a pandemic of violence fueled by a mental health crisis, countered that most mass shootings involve handguns, statements backed up by various recent studies. But most of the most deadly mass shootings involved semiautomatic rifles such as the AR-15, according to the Violence Project, and their presence makes the shootings more deadly.
Throughout the session, as the General Assembly has debated and passed several other gun bills, students repeatedly have gathered at the state Capitol to demand action in the wake of recent shootings at and near Denver East High School and mass shootings elsewhere in the country.
Republican lawmakers have opposed the entirety of Democrats’ gun reform bills, and their supporters have vowed to sue to block their implementations. On Wednesday, gun owners, advocates and gun store owners blasted the bill as unconstitutional and unworkable and said the bill’s definition of assault weapons was overly broad and would hurt the industry should it be passed as written.
Rep. Stephanie Luck, a Colorado Springs Republican, questioned the frequency of assault weapons’ use in mass shootings. She asked Adam Shore of Colorado Ceasefire, who testified in support of the measure, about an increase in youths carrying knives in Australia. That country enacted broad gun control policies nearly 30 years ago and confiscated hundreds of thousands of firearms.
Shore replied that knives are less effective in mass shootings than assault weapons.
Other opponents, including several elected county sheriffs, said handguns were more commonly used in gun violence and said the gun violence crisis instead required more law enforcement and more mental health support. They laid the blame for the mass shooting and gun violence epidemic elsewhere: on Democratic policies, on mental health, on an amoral society. Several, such as Joseph Johnson, said lawmakers can’t “legislate human morality.”
The General Assembly has passed much of the legislation rolled out as part of a gun safety package in late February. Those bills, which largely were clustered together as they worked through the Capitol, included age limits and waiting periods, expanded the state’s red-flag law, and made it easier to sue gun manufacturers.
Another bill proposing regulation of ghost guns was introduced in mid-April.
If the Judiciary Committee passes the bill, it still will need multiple votes before the full House and, assuming that happens, will then need to cross over to the Senate and begin the process again.
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