Colorado’s Democratic-controlled House on Sunday passed a bill that would ban the sale and transfer of semiautomatic firearms, a major step for the legislation after roughly the same bill was swiftly killed by Democrats last year.
The bill, which passed on a 35-27 vote, is now on its way to the Democratic-led state Senate. If it passes there, it could bring Colorado in line with 10 other states — including California, New York and Illinois — that have prohibitions on semiautomatic guns.
But even in a state plagued by some of the nation’s worst mass shootings, such legislation faces headwinds.
Colorado’s political history is purple, shifting blue only recently. The bill’s chances of success in the state Senate are lower than they were in the House, where Democrats have a 46-19 majority and a bigger far-left flank. Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, has indicated his wariness over such a ban.
This will get struck down, and it’ll be the one thing I agree with when it does. You can’t just make everything except bolt-action rifles illegal. Semi-automatic firearms encompasses 99% of what people use for self defense in America. This is a clear violation of rights.
Right or wrong it’s a constitutional right for a reason, and that reason has nothing to do with hunting.
Similar to GOP and abortion, dems need to drop this fight. Let’s fix healthcare and save/improve more lives than almost everything else you could spend time on.
I wish beyond wishing that O’rourke would have just shut the fuck up and deferred about coming after people’s guns in Texas. I really wonder if he could’ve squeaked a victory and Texas would be quite different today. Guns are a losing issue. Even more so than abortion or ‘the gays!’, guns bring single-issue voters out from everywhere.
Yup. The good news is that it looks like this year will be the best chance in a long time to ditch Ted Cruz.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2024/texas/
Yes, it was definitely a self-inflicted wound, or maybe a tacit acknowledgement that the campaign was doomed anyway, before the public numbers made it obvious. There is a career path to being on the record with that position, though not in statewide political office in Texas.
I grew up in Florida and lived most of my adult life in Texas, and guns have always been a presence. I still own several, but they’ve been locked in my father-in-law’s garage for several years now; I’m ambivalent about what to do with them, and I don’t find any joy in “target practice” or fetishizing them as a hobby. Skeet shooting with cheap bird-shot might still be pretty fun, but my single-shot 12ga will be perfectly adequate for that if I ever take it back up.
Chronic gun violence is a tragic, horrific thing that is a fact of life in the US, which is unique among stable democracies. It should be low-hanging fruit to regulate guns very heavily, but due to weird quirks of history and even fuckin’ grammar, it’s not. The only solace is that while gun violence in this country should be near zero, like it is in almost every other stable country in the world, it’s not actually a daily threat for most people. It’s a statistically significant cause of death for people who shouldn’t normally be dying, but it’s possible to overstate the impact of the actual numbers. It’s still rare, though unlike the other equally rare things on the list (e.g. cancer, heart attacks), it’s completely preventable, in theory, and therefore even sadder and more frustrating.
So theory is nice, but the history and legal framework around guns in this country means anything beyond baby steps is a political nonstarter and very nearly as hard as “curing cancer”. While I acknowledge it literally costs lives not to act, it will cost more, including more from gun violence, over the medium term, to campaign in ways that lose close elections to people who would love to dismantle the already inadequate social safety net and encourage “old timey” open racists and even worse foreign policy than we have now. Those who feel passionately about guns should not be silent, but if you’re running a surprisingly competitive campaign in a stubbornly red state, you should consider the political implications before committing to unrealistic goals that piss off people who could be persuaded to vote for you if they don’t think guns are your priority.
Yeah, except that’s also not the US.
The other stable countries in the world have things like much lower rates of income inequality, single-payer health care, solid funding for education at all levels so that people aren’t going into eye-watering levels of debt, and so on. And the countries that do suck in many of the same ways that the US does also have staggeringly high rates of violent crime in general, if not an significant gun crime.
Yeah, this is something I stand firmly behind. Fundamentally, our issue is social and cultural. We are armed, and so when we lash out, that has greater impact.
That doesn’t mean we should disarm. We are armed for good reason. But we should address the underlying cultural issues.
One hundred percent agree.
Communism works… in theory. your entire argument works… in theory.
Reality is much different.
Hence my entire final paragraph.
I agree with you wholeheartedly.
I would prefer much stronger gun control laws and I still agree with you. There are better fights to fight and more likely to win. This feels like empty posturing in an election year.
People always want to make it more difficult to get a gun, but when it comes to them actually paying for it (extra taxes covering free licensing, free safety classes, whatever) it’s crickets
It is my CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to own a ROCKET LAUNCHER! You CAN’T Discriminate between Firearms! Also TRANS PEOPLE shouldn’t get Free Speech!
Keep shadowboxing those straw men buddy. It’s definitely working out well for you.
You’re right. It has to due with being able to call up a militia. I don’t see any of these gun stores asking for militia papers before selling.
Militia didn’t mean the same thing back then. It meant “any able bodied adult to be called up at a moments notice.”
There’s also a (not surprisingly) racist background to the 2nd as well:
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment
“It was in response to the concerns coming out of the Virginia ratification convention for the Constitution, led by Patrick Henry and George Mason, that a militia that was controlled solely by the federal government would not be there to protect the slave owners from an enslaved uprising. And … James Madison crafted that language in order to mollify the concerns coming out of Virginia and the anti-Federalists, that they would still have full control over their state militias — and those militias were used in order to quell slave revolts. … The Second Amendment really provided the cover, the assurances that Patrick Henry and George Mason needed, that the militias would not be controlled by the federal government, but that they would be controlled by the states and at the beck and call of the states to be able to put down these uprisings.”
Context also matters. The authors also thought that a standing army was part of the park to tyranny, opting for a militia system in place of it. The purpose of the Second Amendment, by its own words, is to ensure that nothing could legally stand in the way of regular and irregular militia being able to protect the fledgling nation.
As it stands now, the Second Amendment is an anachronism that’s sole purpose for existing is no longer applicable. It needs to be re-evaluated and amended to fit the needs of a nation that has both a standing army and a problem with civilians shooting each other (police are civilians too).
The trick with amending it is the process is such a high bar, it can’t be done given current political divisions.
290 Congressmen, 67 Senators, and 38 states all have to agree to the new terms to make it happen.
The last time we saw that kind of unity in the House was the 311 votes to bounce George Santos. LOL!
This is also true. Would be better chances if there was actual proportionality in the House.
A pipedream at best, 36 States have flatly refused to even consider any amendment to the 2nd.
This is, unfortunately true.
No they knew an army was necessary to defend the nation, and therefore militias were to be allowed to counterbalance the army.
The constitution was specifically written to allow a standing army to exist. Not having one was a major failure of the articles of confederation. The second ammendment doesn’t exist for some obscure military purpose, it exists to give people the right to bear arms.
Because of the army. They knew an army was required, so they knew the populace must be permitted to keep their guns, to balance the power of the army.
This is factually incorrect.
Casual reading of contextual documents by the authors of the Constitution makes it very clear that the reason for the time limit is the belief that standing armies ought not to exist and are tools of tyranny. The context of the Second Amendment is not done obscure military one, it is blatant in the Amendment’s text that it concerns militia, which was the founders’ alternative to a standing army. In that context, yes, it does require that all people be able to bear arms because the irregular militia was basically anyone capable of shouldering a musket.
However, as the country did move to have a standing army and police forces, the militia system is mostly obsolete. The closest thing to a militia in the country in modern times is the national guard but, they are closer to a “select militia” that was also looked upon unfavorably by the founders.
I’m not placing a judgement on the Second Amendment as being right or wrong but that it was written for a context that is mismatched with our own. It needs to be re-evaluated and updated to account for the difference in context in order to have a logical place in the law of the country.
The US has always had a standing army, so even the people that wrote the constitution voted to keep a standing army. The notion that it was intended to not have a standing army is a wilful misrepresentation.
You know what? I don’t think that you’re correct but am not a historian, though I did study a bit of early US history in university. Fortunately, there are historians that we can ask to figure this out. Will edit with a post if they’re willing to comment on the issue.
lives in an era where vast swathes of the underclass live in de facto military occupation under a standing army in blue uniforms, where there is frequent murder with impunity and framing of innocent people to cover it up
“As it stands now, the Second Amendment is an anachronism that’s [sic] sole purpose for existing is no longer applicable.”
Unreal.
I don’t think that’s actually what we would want. Militias at this point would just be indoctrination machines.
Unless someone runs an LGBTQIA+ militia and pays for range days and safety classes every month, most militias people look to join are run by obese Right wing nutcases.
Somebody needs to do this. Freedom is endangered when only the right is armed.
There are some of us doing this, but not enough. The Socialist Rifle Association is very LGBTQIA+ friendly. They probably have a chapter near anyone in the US that happens to be reading this, if they are interested in learning how to defend and support their communities.
Like public schools aren’t already?
I like how you specify public schools, as if private schools have no bias. 😂
private schools have no government oversight. public ones do. therefore my (and your) tax dollars to go those schools. This is why i specified public schools over private. Not everyone can afford to send their kids to a private school and if they do and don’t like the curriculum, that’s easily changed. Public school not so much. Broaden your mind a little bit instead of just being instantly confrontational.
EXACTLY why they are indoctrination factories.
Agreed! That’s why we need to send more kids to CATHOLIC SCHOOLS!
Agreed. The 2A is a right, full stop. Doesn’t matter if you or I like it, the courts agree, and have historically.
You’ll get a dozen dumb arguments, but none will address the fact of the 2A. And there’s no way it gets overturned given our amendment procedures.
This is actually a pretty dumb stunt. It’s going to lose in court, zero doubt. And now there’s more precedence.
Lever-Action FTW! ;)
Guess I’ll have to go chain-fed
Theyre used a lot more for homicides than for self defense
A lot more than what? Bolt action? Yes, because as the parent said, nearly all guns are semi auto.
A lot more than for self defense
But what are they used more than?
I disagree but this is the phrase in question:
Take your time. Parse each word carefully.
I said more for not more than
Britain did.
And if we’re going on the intent of the founders, they mostly had muzzle-loaders in mind. They certainly didn’t consider automatic weapons able to fire huge amounts of bullets extremely quickly.
Britain doesn’t have a 2nd Amendment.
Now, if you want to repeal it, sure, there’s a process for that…
Start by getting 290 votes in the House. The same body that struggles to get a simple 218 vote majority to decide who their own leader is.
Then you get 67 votes in the Senate. The same body that struggles to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
Then, assuming you get all that, you need ratification from 38 states. In 2020, Biden and Trump split the states 25/25. So you need ALL the Biden states (good luck getting Georgia!) and 13 Trump states. For every Biden state you lose, you need +1 Trump state.
Unless you just have a sensible court that don’t claim to be “Originalists” while at the same time ignoring the fact that the arms the founders were think of were not ones that didn’t exist at the time.
Email and Twitter didn’t exist at the time either, but they are still protected under the First and Fourth Amendments. Cell phones with unlock codes didn’t exist, but they’re still covered under the Fourth Amendment That’s a spurious argument that holds zero merit.
The Second Amendment might not be something you like, but modern firearms are ABSOLUTELY covered. The second amendment must be altered or removed from the Constitution to come even close to what you’re asking. And that process was explained to you up the thread a little
And yet “originalist” judges say that we need to consider what the founders meant. Except, apparently, when it comes to one half of one amendment.
Well, then you need to spend 50 years dedicated to changing the makeup of the Court the way the Republicans did with Roe… see you in 2074! Well, not me PERSONALLY, but you get the idea. ;)
Somewhat relevant from Key and Peele.
Was discussing this recently. A big bit of context that is important is how the founders intended for the military to be organized for their fledgling nation. Their intent was that there be no standing army because all of the powers that they knew that had them used them for imperialism and tyranny. So, the intent was to prevent states from getting in the way of raising regular (trained and uniformed) and irregular (anyone who could shoulder a musket) militia, should it be necessary to defend the nation against an incursion from a hostile power.
Now, it’s been well over a hundred years since the US has had a standing army. While that does not technically invalidate the Second Amendment, it does make it an anachronism that doesn’t fit in the context of the modern world. It should have been re-legislated as soon as a standing army became a thing.
Now, if only there were a mechanism built into the US Constitution to allow it to be updated to fit the needs of the nation. Maybe they could have called them “Changements”. /s
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They certanly did, as Thomas Jefferson owned two of them, each carrying 35 rounds of .29mm. One is on display at Monticello, the one he lent to the Lewis & Clark Expedition that was used to successfully defeat a 50-man raiding party, is kept at The Smithsonian.
Agreed! It’s UNCONSTITUTIONAL to have ANY form of Regulation on Arms! Why is it ILLEGAL for me to not be able to own a Grenade Launcher? UNCONSTITUTIONAL!
you CAN own a Grenade Launcher. you just have to jump through ATF hoops and pay hella tax.
Guess it isn’t a right in that case. Last time I checked I don’t have to pay money and fill out paperwork to express my political opinions.
What you’re describing is an infringement on a right.
Hey folks, this comment above mine is what’s called a ‘straw-man’ fallacy. It’s when you don’t have an argument against for the specific argument being stated, so you invent another similar but significantly different argument to argue against instead. The first comment states that it’s ridiculous to ban semi auto firearms when that’s the vast majority of guns you can buy, and the second commenter instead argues that they should be legally allowed to own a grenade launcher in sarcasm as an attempt to show how firearm legal restrictions are a good thing as they prevent the ownership of grenade launchers.
Also, it’s legal to own a grenade launcher in the US. It’s just not legal to own the grenades. Plus, a grenade launcher is really just any 37mm chambered weapon. It could fire grenades, flares, or smoke bombs. They’re also single shot weapons, so a semi-auto ban isn’t going to cover them.
I’m Pro Life and see NO PROBLEM with people with Mental Health issues having Grenade Launchers. After all ANY FORM OF Well Regulation is AGAINST the Constitution! And pointing out your Hypocrisy is OBVIOUSLY a Straw Man Fallacy!
Your use of randomly capitalized words does not, at all, make you look like a child screaming because his mom said no McDonalds. Definitely not.
I mean, it’d be kind of fun…