It’s that time of year again, when lawmakers gather at the State Capitol and consider legislation that will impact how Coloradans hunt, shoot, generate income, and protect themselves from harm.
Last year, efforts to pass an “Assault Weapons Ban” fizzled out after a valiant fight but now, with a fresh injection of out-of-state Bloomberg ‘Stop and Frisk’ money into the campaign coffers of key legislators, similar legislation is poised to sail through the legislative process and arrive on the governor’s desk for signature in a matter of weeks.
Sadly, the legislation under consideration, Senate Bill 25-003, is worse than its predecessor. After a late-night marathon reading, it has passed on second reading with some alarming mutations. If passed, Colorado would ban the manufacture, sale, and transfer of semi-automatic firearms with a removable magazine, but then selectively reissue those rights to citizens who previously had them through a controversial Illinois-style FOID card system. This new system would essentially delegate who may or may not have access to the most-sold rifle in America and the most popular firearm used for home defense. The bill sponsors continue to insult the intelligence of Coloradans by maintaining this is merely a magazine enforcement bill.
This legislation is nothing short of radical. Sponsors passed up common-sense amendments to create exceptions for at-risk women and install data monitoring mechanisms but making concessions for Hollywood due to the potential for more state revenue. It’s also completely ridiculous and Colorado voters agree. According to a recent poll released publicly this week, 54% of voters say they feel less safe over the last few years and 60% say crime in Colorado is getting worse.
But what the governor and lawmakers need to highlight and underline in the poll is that 58% of respondents said that the 8 new gun laws in the last year in Colorado have been “Not Effective” in reducing crime in their community.
Given that sentiment, it’s no surprise that only 20% of voters think Senate Bill 3 will have a major impact on reducing crime. Citizens cite “poverty/economic hardship”, “illegal immigration” and “drug abuse” as the root cause of crime in Colorado. Only 9% of those surveyed think firearms are the problem. This recent polling data aligns with the findings from numerous other national studies conducted between 2016 and 2024.
This is a pivotal moment for politicians in our state. Will they listen to the 80% of voters who want the legislature to focus on solving issues that actually matter to them, or will they continue with a weapons ban that’s largely panned by the electorate?
Will legislators tackle economic issues and illegal immigration, which 42% of voters cite as their top priorities for the legislature, or will these “public servants” continue to lean into groupthink by pushing a bill that is ineffective, unpopular, and wildly unconstitutional?
Gov. Jared Polis is not immune from this conversation. He ultimately has the power here and his decision on whether to sign SB3 into law will have a generational impact.
Will Polis ignore the majority of Coloradans who reject a ban on firearms used for self-defense and hunting or instead bow to the political pressure? Is the governor more concerned with appeasing a niche group of activists by doubling down on vainglorious gun control or will he make it clear that criminals and bad policy, not guns, are the problem and set his agenda accordingly?
As a proud resident of this great state, I am imploring our elected officials to do the right thing and reject Senate Bill 25-003. Our safety, our Colorado way of life, and our future is on the line — we need courageous and free men and women in office to publicly oppose this legislation and push for effective crime prevention measures that will keep our families and communities safe.
Just know that when these lawmakers buck their party or the grasp of certain special interests, they won’t be standing alone. Coloradans want to be safe and know that gun bans (that criminals ignore) and selective redistribution of natural rights won’t make it easier to sleep at night.
So, just say “No” to SB3 and let’s make Colorado safe, and uniquely Colorado, again!
Kelyn Lanier lives in Aurora and is a business consultant, founder of The Alloi Group and Co-founder of The Constellation Homes Project.
You lost me at ” the most-sold rifle in America and the most popular firearm used for home defense”. We live in a society that ignores common sense. The AR-15 is a really bad choice for home defense.
What exactly gives you the moral authority to assert that you can speak for anyone but yourself?
Perhaps you’re lost because you can’t read the room or recognize people have differing opinions and viewpoints from you.
And what makes you assert the AR15 is poor for home defense? Where’s your concrete evidence? Or is this just another opinion you feel is fact that you wish to project onto every one else?
EDITOR’S NOTE: The commenter included a link to unvetted opinion.
Sir, I have run more rounds through a barrel than most people. I hunted deer in Iowa for over 40 years with a rifle, muzzleloader, bow, and shotgun (slugs). The only kinds of guns I ever needed were hunting guns. I owned only one semi-automatic rifle, and that was a Ruger 22 with a 10-shot clip for squirrel hunting. Most of the time all I needed was one shot. An AR-15 is never needed in the field, nor is a 30-round clip. I never felt that I needed a gun for protection. BTW, read the Second Amendment. It prefaces the right to bear arms for a well-regulated militia!
This isn’t about you and your grotesque and overinflated narcissism.
No, but it does address your ignorance.
We continue to lead the world in firearm deaths. Our cities are free fire zones.
And the rest of the world recognizes we’re insane. The civilized world doesn’t have the weekly gun death totals we have, not even close.
Live by the gun, die by the gun. Die by the thousands.
Don’t you know that the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the Second Amendment gives individuals a personal right to possess firearms unconnected with service in a militia and to use firearms for self-defense? I don’t think anyone would argue about the AR-15 not being a good hunting rifle, especially for big game. But, that’s not the issue. No one is saying SB 25-03 is going to curtail hunting privileges. It does, however, unnecessarily burden an individual’s right to possess firearms for self-defense.
News flash: The Supreme Court has often been wrong. Particularly, say, in Dred Scott v. Sanford, when they ruled black people could never be citizens. Or Plessy v. Ferguson, when they held “separate but equal” racial segregation was just fine. Or Korematsu v. U.S., when they decided that Japanese-American citizens could be imprisoned in concentration camps.
Heller v. District of Columbia is such a decision. They ignored history in one of their worst decisions to find a constitutional right to own a gun.
Not something I’d want to hang my hat on.
Thank you, Citizen Kane. The AR-15 is the weapon of choice for school shooters and other mass murderers. The constant whining by gun nuts that banning this weapon will end their rights to own deadly weapons is just that – anti-social whining. I say let’s pass this legislation and start to end the slaughter in our schools and public places.
Charles Whitman did not use an AR15 when he killed 15 people and wounded 31 more at the University of Texas. He used a hunting rifle, a bolt-action rifle like the ones Citizen Kane thinks are ok for us to use. The problem isn’t the particular weapon, it’s the particular person pulling the trigger. SB 25-03 doesn’t do anything about that and won’t stop criminals from obtaining “deadly weapons” to use against the rest of us.
If we knew that our government could be trusted to honor its commitments and promises and to make informed decisions, then I would go along with a ban on an AR15. I would not go along with a general ban on weapons with detached magazines that covers many weapons commonly used for home defense. The thing to realize, and something conveniently overlooked by the media and the legislature, is what the legislature has already done to us. In a knee jerk reaction to the George Floyd death, the legislature passed SB217 and basically destroyed law enforcement in Colorado. Thousands of senior officers, who understood what the bill did, left law enforcement. The officers understood that an uninformed public no longer backed police officers. Worse yet, politically correct prosecutors and the State Attorney General, were now free to enhance their political careers by prosecuting police officers. There are cases where police officers should be prosecuted. They are cases where a thorough examination of the evidence has been made and not an emotional response to an uninformed emotional outcry from the public. The Supreme Court
made it clear in Graham versus Connor that the use of force should be judged from the perspective of a reasonable police officer at the scene and not from 20/20 hindsight. A slew of wrongful prosecutions have resulted and the juries have cleared many of the officers involved when the evidence was heard. In one case, the Attorney General managed to convene a grand jury and go after everyone in sight on the Elijah McClain case. Although many resisting suspects had died in the past from no apparent cause and undetermined by medical authorities, the medical authorities and the prosecutors could now speak authoritatively about the cause of death. In fact, numerous police recruits have died as a result of physical stress during training. These were people who had some reasonable belief that they were in decent health. The people dying on the street were more often people on drugs or people who had abused their bodies.
In other cases, officers were charged or fired just because they touched a suspect’s neck in a resistance. The politically correct police administrators, who have long been responsible for failure to train and supervise, were now able to jump on the bandwagon and condemn officers. If you look at the huge sums paid out over crowd control in the George Floyd riots, you should ask some questions. First, notice that the afteraction reports show that the officers had no faith in their leadership to come up with practical approaches or to lead during the riots. These same administrators have demonstrated a lack of courage in confronting the legislature over the SB217 bill and its consequences. I understand that they don’t have courage individually, but they belong to Chiefs’ and Sheriffs’ associations that would shelter them. So, without going into great detail, I will tell you that SB217 is vague and punitive and an unworkable approach to law enforcement. The immediate response from police administrators was to tell their officers that that did not know what the law meant and to not stop anyone. One police legal advisor, in training officers on the new bill, said that all she could figure was that the legislature did not want you to touch anyone. Hard to do police work with these types of guidelines. So, with the exodus of experienced police officers and the vague legal guidelines, is it any wonder that there are more DUI deaths and more crime. The legislature and the media do not want to admit that they made a grievous error. They want to hire a lot more young, inexperienced police officers to “build back better”. They are telling you how much they care about the public safety, but they will not address the disastrous bill that they used to destroy law enforcement.
With such a major mistake like SB217 unaddressed, how am I to believe that the legislature has the good judgment to address gun control? When they cannot reevaluate the results of disastrous SB217, how can I believe they will seriously look at what they have done on gun control? First you do away with effective law enforcement and then you make it ever more difficult for citizens to protect themselves. The legislature has continually made it easier and less punitive for criminals in Colorado.
The native Americans can give you an idea how much the American government can be trusted. There is a Scythian proverb from thousand of years ago that says “Wise men argue causes…fools decide them”. People who know something have little venue or chance to argue against the fools who make uninformed and emotional decisions. Can you blame people who want to be able to protect themselves and do not trust people in a government who make emotional decisions? Look at the immigration issue. How long has it taken for the government to respond to an overwhelming and unsustainable influx of illegal immigrants? Many in Europe have been warning us for decades.
So, I would not trust our radical legislature to come up with realistic approaches to your safety. Given the chance, I would vote against most of the legislature’s gun control approaches.
Oh my god, Black again. Say, if you don’t control criminals with guns( and that’s anybody with a gun and a temper) how do you propose to lower violence by guns. Trump is fine with ghost guns. People already modify their own guns to fully automatic. Hundred round drum mags. You want RPGs in every home?
Oh my god, Black again. Say, if you don’t control criminals with guns( and that’s anybody with a gun and a temper) how do you propose to lower violence by guns. Trump is fine with ghost guns. People already modify their own guns to fully automatic. Hundred round drum mags. You want RPGs in every home?