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January 14, 2025
Colorado Lawmakers Go Full Gun Grab with Semiauto Ban Bill
Colorado’s lawmakers have gone full Rocky Mountain high with their latest gun grab proposal. There’s something in the air up there and well… it just stinks to high heaven.
Several Colorado lawmakers took a bad idea floated by U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Angus King (I-Maine) in the last Congress. That was a bill they introduced the GOSAFE Act, or the Gas-Operated, Semi-Automatic Exclusions Act. It was introduced in the U.S. Senate as S. 3369 and it was such a terrible idea that U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath introduced her own version in the U.S. House of Representatives as H.R. 8600. Those bills would have banned the sale of Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) and most other semiautomatic rifles.
Fortunately, neither bill was even considered in their respective committees.
NSSF flatly rejected even the idea of this legislation. It is openly defiant – and frankly repugnant – to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller decision that held that entire classes of firearms that are commonly used for lawful purposes cannot be banned from legal sale and possession by law-abiding citizens.
NSSF’s Larry Keane said of the legislation in November 2023 in a press release, “There is no path forward for legislation of this nature that would deprive law-abiding citizens the ability to lawfully possess the firearm of their choosing and the full spectrum of their Second Amendment rights,” adding, “Depriving law-abiding citizens of their Constitutional rights for the criminal acts of a depraved individual doesn’t make our communities safer.”
Hopped Up Hoplophobia
None of that matters when gun control is a mile-high, apparently. And Colorado lawmakers aren’t about to let a bad idea go up in smoke. Just look at SB3, introduced by state Sen. Julie Gonzales and state Rep. Meg Froelich. If those two names sound familiar regarding Colorado gun control, it’s because they demanded strict gun control last year. Sen. Gonzales introduced a ban on MSRs in Colorado last year, which failed. Two years ago, Rep. Froelich sponsored a bill that Gov. Jared Polis signed into law that put in place a three-day waiting period to take possession of a firearm legally purchased at retail even after the buyer passed a background check.
SB3 inhales all of that gun control smoke and holds it for greater effect. The bill would ban the manufacture, distribution, transfer or sale of a specified semiautomatic firearm. In particular, that’s any semiautomatic firearm that accepts a detachable magazine. With this bill, Colorado would say goodbye to MSR sales and most semiautomatic rifles. Semiautomatic handguns with detachable magazines – which comprise the overwhelming majority of handguns – would vanish. Shotguns with detachable magazines too. Privately-manufactured firearms (PMFs) would be swept up as well. It would seem only bolt action rifles, lever-action and break-action rifles and shotguns, pump shotguns and revolvers would make it through the Denver fog.
Splitting Hairs
Of course, gun control critics would offer that they are compromising and not infringing on the rights to keep and bear arms. After all, they’re not trying to ban possession of semiautomatic firearms that accept detachable magazines. It’s just making them. And selling them. And transferring them, even privately. Get caught doing it the first time and it’s a Class 2 misdemeanor. Get caught doing it again – now it would be a Class 6 felony. In other words, gun rights altogether for a subsequent offense would vaporize.
For good measure, the lawmakers threw in bonus features to the ban bill. It also includes “rapid-fire devices.” So, so long to bump stocks, binary triggers and forced reset triggers.
Gun Control Buzzkill
The problem with it all is that the right to keep and bear arms begins with the ability to legally acquire the arms. When law-abiding Americans – even in Colorado – are barred from legally purchasing arms that are protected by the Second Amendment (which include commonly-owned and commonly-used MSRs to the tune of 30 million), this law runs into what the U.S. Supreme Court said in Heller. The late-Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion that the Second Amendment “arms ‘in common use at the time’ for lawful purposes like self-defense” and arms that are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.”
The kicker here is that those “arms” are “chosen by American society.” Nothing in the decision said those arms are dictated by government.
These antics by lawmakers intent in infringing on Second Amendment rights, unfortunately, aren’t new. The legal wrangling that’s followed isn’t unique, either. What is prescient is that the U.S. Supreme Court met to consider two cases that challenge state MSR bans and standard capacity magazines – Snope v. Brown and Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island –NSSF submitted amicus briefs in both cases. The court conferenced on the petitions that may put the matter of states infringing on the rights of law-abiding Americans to possess the most commonly-used semiautomatic rifle in America and standard-capacity magazines to rest.
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