1y ago

Semiautomatic firearm ban passes Colorado's House, heads to Senate

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.

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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.
  
  It is my CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to own a ROCKET LAUNCHER! You CAN'T Discriminate between Firearms! Also TRANS PEOPLE shouldn't get Free Speech!
  
  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.
- You can’t just make everything except bolt-action rifles illegal.
  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.
- 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!
I'll give up my guns when the cops do it first.
- You gonna win a shootout with cops?
  
  You ever seen cops shoot?
  I've seen a bunch of 'em get DQ'd from matches for being unsafe, or drop out when it was clear their scores were trash.
  
  The goal isn't to beat the cops. It's to defend against neonazis.
  Do you think the cops are gonna disarm neonazis? Or will they just use gun bans as an excuse to murder more black people?
Supreme Court shoots it down in 3-2-1...
The Heller ruling in 2008 already decided this.
Washington D.C. had effectively banned pistols, the court ruled then:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/570/
"As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate, the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right. The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights,[Footnote 27] banning from the home “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,” 478 F. 3d, at 400, would fail constitutional muster."
So, no, you can't ban an entire class of weapon.
- So, no, you can’t ban an entire class of weapon.
  You absolutely can. Full-auto weapons are banned for general purchase in pretty much every state. Things like explosive-based guns are also banned. Flame-throwers, etc.
  Heller is a clear violation of state's rights to pass more-restrictive laws than the federal level. We've had tons of gun laws that restrict purchases and types of firearms for decades anyways on the state and local level.
- The whole bit about being primarily used for a lawful purpose seems important.
  
  .
- So, no, you can’t ban an entire class of weapon.
  I don't know about that. In general, rocket-propelled weapons and land mines are not legal for ownership. You even need special dispensation to own a fully automatic machine gun.
  
  Those are explosives, completely different deal from firearms. Supreme court ruled on that too, Caetano, 2016:
  https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/577/411/
  “The Second Amendment covers all weapons that may be defined as 'bearable arms,' even if they did not exist when the Bill of Rights was drafted and are not commonly used in warfare."
  Caetano is really my favorite of these rulings because it started out having nothing to do with guns.
  Woman, scared of her ex, bought a stun gun for protection. Massachusetts arrested her, stated "stun guns didn't exist back then, no 2nd Amendment right to a stun gun."
  Court "um, actually'd" them pretty hard.
  So, you can't ban a class of gun (Heller, 2008) and you can't ban a bearable arm just because it didn't exist 200 years ago (Caetano, 2016.)
  And the court has only gotten MORE conservative since then, not less. :( This new ban is going to go nowhere fast, shame Colorado taxpayers are going to have to pay for a losing case.
This ban will apply to police as well?
- Of course
It's not a "Semi-Automatic Firearm Ban" it's an Assault Weapons Tax. Seriously the only penalties in this bill are modest ($750) fines.
No matter which side of this debate you are on this legislation is a joke.
Conservatives are demanding the widespread oppression and even slaughter of our nation's most vulnerable groups and the best we can come up with is "let's disarm ourselves". FFS
Why not outlaw far-right ideologies like nazism? The conservatives would oppose that too, but it's something all the normal people can agree on.
Imagine still wanting gun control people after January 6th 2021 and the police violence of the George floydd protests.
We're on our own, stop hiding your heads in the sand.
SocialistRA.org
- The only 2021 protests where people weren't getting their eyes shot out by pepperballs and beanbags were the ones where people were armed. Message fucking received.
Isn't that like... most guns people actually use other than some shotguns and some handguns? And even then, why you would use a pump action over a semi-automatic shotgun is beyond me...
- Anything but revolvers, bolt-action, and pump-action. ..well, there's muzzle loaders, too.. Kinda extreme.
  
  I'd consider a revolver to be semi automatic as well. It shoots each time you squeeze the trigger.
This just seems like a stupid time to be pressing legislation like this. I don't even disagree with it myself. I just think it's idiotic from a political perspective. The Dems can see the GoP struggling with the fall out of Roe v. Wade, and they still want to step into this fight now?
- Step in and lose as it's swiftly struck down by one of the most conservative courts in history.
I first read they ban semiautomatic fire alarms, and was wondering why and what even a semiautomatic fire alarm is
I don't expect this to go over well with the federal supreme court...
- We've already established a line that some weapons are too dangerous for the general public. I wonder why states can't draw the line of what weapons it considers are too dangerous.
This still allows bolt action for hunting, revolvers and shotguns for defense. That should be plenty. If you're spraying a dozen+ rounds in your own home for defense you're more of a danger than an intruder at that point.
Democrats last year passed and Polis signed into law four less-expansive gun control bills. Those included raising the age for buying any gun from 18 to 21; establishing a three-day waiting period between the purchase and receipt of a gun; strengthening the state’s red flag law; and rolling back some legal protections for the firearms industry, exposing it to lawsuits from the victims of gun violence.
Common-sense gun regulation.
Republicans decried the legislation as an onerous encroachment on the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. They argued that mental illness and people who do not value life — not guns — are the issues that should be addressed. People with ill intent can use other weapons, such as knives, to harm others, they argued.
Lol. And yet healthcare is something Republicans fight against constantly. And "people who do not value life" is great from the forced-birth and no social safety nets crowd.
Democrats responded that semiautomatic weapons can cause much more damage in a short period of time.
Exactly. If you're incredibly viscous and lucky you can get a lot of people, but rarely double digits with a hand-held blade. With a semi-automatic rifle you can get dozens with someone untrained. And we've seen it happen. Multiple times.
- .
- Not really what this post is about, but can we get rid of the "common sense gun laws" mantra already? It's implying that anyone who disagrees with it, for ANY reason, doesn't have common sense. It's not good for having a meaningful discussion on how we can work together to deal with this problem.
  Personally, I don't think guns are the underlying issue here. While I am not against regulation, I think plenty of events show that without firearms tragedies will still occur. So it would only be a small part of preventing these sort of events.
  Gun culture is a major issue, even beyond the guns themselves. "Come and take em" and "fuck around and find out" are symptoms of a mentality that guns are a solution to solving problems that's on par with discussion, leaving, or de-escalating. When ultimately, guns are the final answer that should only be used when all other options have been exhausted.
  Socioeconomic pressures and inequality issues need to be addressed to deal with most gun crimes, since mass shootings are the minority cases in which gun deaths occur. Yes, when they happen they are atrocious and make headlines and everyone hears and talks about it, but when people are dieing literally every day from guns we can't only focus on the events that catch media attention.
  Mental health, and by extension, all health needs to be made a priority. Suicides by guns is by and far the most common method.
  Media needs to stop stoking fear and divisiveness. We see too often than someone reacts with extreme actions to perceived threats that aren't really there. They've been primed to be afraid ALL THE TIME. So when someone knocks at the wrong door or uses their driveway to turn around they violent "protect" themselves from a threat that never existed.
  Stop the worshipping of property. It is NEVER worth the taking of life to protect property. This goes back to gun culture where people believe that using a gun to protect their own shit is somehow a valid solution. This also extends to the police. Fuck them for violently protecting property over people.
  Fix the police problem. At the very least, teach them fucking patience. At every point they try to end a non-violent interaction as fast as possible that they are often the ones to escalate to violence. Unless someone's life is directly and immediately threatened, chill the fuck out.
- And that's why I appendix carry a S&W 500. One shot, anywhere in meat, is a show stopper.
  
  At $2/rd for a kinda rare $2,000 gun, I'd rather throw literal money at assailants harassing me.
- They specifically banned the rifle I like shooting: Daniel Defense M4A1.
  Guns aren’t just for hunting or defense. I wasn’t on board until I went to the range. I’m now a fan of rifles.
  I’m not a huge fan of California spec rifles. Unless you buy multiple mags, switching out is a pain.
  Now what WOULD be neat, is if I could buy the rifle and then purchase a magazine of ammo at the range, returning the magazine and unspent ammo at the counter

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