Colorado Democrats on Thursday voted down a bill that, in its original form, would have banned the sale or transfer of certain high-powered semiautomatic rifles in the state.
After pushback, bill sponsor Rep. Elisabeth Epps, a Denver Democrat, pared down the legislation to ban devices like bump stocks and trigger activators, which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire at much faster rates.
The Trump administration banned bump stocks at the federal level in 2018 after a gunman used one at a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, killing 58 people. A federal appeals court undercut the ban in January 2023, setting up a potential Supreme Court ruling.
Epps’ concession wasn’t enough for the measure to clear the House Judiciary Committee, however, where it failed on an 7-6 vote in the early hours Thursday morning, with three Democrats joining four Republicans to vote it down. Democrats hold a 9-4 majority on the committee.
Committee Chair Mike Weissman (D) ultimately supported the bill.
“With every passing week and month it’s more and more evident that the balance is badly out of whack,” he remarked. “That the cost to all of us outweighs the benefit and that an adjustment needs to be made for the health, safety and welfare of our people.”
Two of the Democrats who voted against the bill, Reps. Marc Snyder and Bob Marshall, said they campaigned on a message to not take away legally owned guns and defended their votes as being in line with that pledge.
Nine states and the District of Columbia have passed similar bans, with Washington expected to be the 10th.
The hearing drew 522 witnesses, setting a record for the 2023 session, according to Colorado Politics. Gun violence in the state recently hit a 40-year high, an analysis by the Colorado Sun found.
Survivors of multiple recent mass shootings in Colorado attended and testified Thursday, including Grand Cramer, a freshman at Denver’s East High School, which has seen two shootings in recent months.
“Don’t think for a second that you will get away with this because you are part of the Democratic Party,” Cramer said, calling out the Democrats who ultimately voted it down. “We are ready to make sure that you lose your reelection in a landslide vote.”
On the pro-gun side, Austin Hein, a director at the National Association for Gun Rights, urged legislators to vote against the bill because, he said, it would leave unaddressed the root causes of gun violence: “gun-free zones” and “overly medicated children in fatherless homes.”
While this particular measure failed to advance, four other gun control bills await the signature of Gov. Jared Polis (D). If signed into law, the bills would:
- Raise the minimum age to buy (but not possess) a gun from 18 to 21.
- Expand the liability of firearm manufacturers to victims of gun violence.
- Implement a mandatory three-day waiting period between the purchase and receipt of a firearm
- Expand the state’s “red flag” law, allowing more people to petition a court to have someone’s firearms temporarily seized.
Rep. Tom Sullivan (D), whose son died in the Aurora theater shooting, co-sponsored two of the bills.
Another bill, introduced earlier this month, would make “ghost guns” illegal in Colorado. The homemade, unserialized firearms can be ordered and assembled via mail, making them readily accessible and difficult ― if not impossible ― to track.
Polis told Colorado Public Radio he’d support the measure.
“We’re not talking gunsmiths here. We’re talking about snapping together three mail-order pieces to have a completed weapon that you had no background check for, even if you were a convicted felon ... and might not legally have the right to acquire that,” he said.