A group of misguided and misleading Colorado sheriffs and their band of relentless anti-gun-control cohorts must be dizzy from the spin they’re putting on their second and (this time) lethal legal attempt to undo two piddling Colorado gun regulations.
The group of 64 sheriffs made big headlines but very little sense back in 2013 when they got all huffy in front all the cameras they could muster to say they were suing Colorado to protect us all.
Yeah, it was that vacuous. They said they were lawyering up to sue Gov. John Hickenlooper because he and reckless Democrats were trying to grab guns and steal your Second Amendment rights. They were hotter’n a dog’s butt on an asphalt parking lot in August for Hick’s signing into law two pretty lame and tame gun control measures.
One law closed a loophole allowing some gun sales without background checks — yawn. The other law limited the size of gun magazines. The max allowable size of a magazine is now only 15 rounds per clip, hardly turning squeeze-n-shoot junkies’ military might into nothing but air rifles. The laws were achingly enacted after a lot of public grief and outrage from the Aurora theater and the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacres in 2012. That was back when people were outraged by mass shootings and massacres, or at least mildly shocked and surprised. These days, Coloradans are far more shaken up by snowfall rather than reports of mass shootings. Big snows are much rarer than big shootings, though.
So in the summer of 2013, these sheriffs — at times led by former Colorado Springs Sheriff Terry “Happy Pants” Maketa — gathered to say they considered themselves the last line of defense against lies, indecency and corruption Democrat lawmakers dealt by enacting those two gun laws. Sheriff Happy Pants later had to be excused from that charge after being forced out of office when it was revealed that he had a thing for sexting his subordinate-lover from his home bathroom and other less decent and more corrupt incidents. Of course that had nothing to do with gun control, just self control.
The remaining sheriffs kept their pants on and sued on your behalf, even though they’re sworn to uphold the laws instead of undermine them. They’re not lawmakers nor prosecutors, but they were determined to play them on TV. In their role as sheriffs-turned-judges, the men with stars on their chests and in their eyes determined that not all laws are created equal.
A real court said differently. The law is the law when it comes to enforcers, and these two wimpy gun laws most certainly pass constitutional muster, the court said.
Harrrumph.
Unfazed, clearly unchecked and, in some cases, unhinged, they sued again. This time, they appealed to another federal court, which this week told them to go away. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver didn’t even bother considering their lame constitutionality appeal. The court ruled these sheriffs have no standing (Read: business) filing the lawsuit in the first place.
Of course the sheriffs, aided by the Barney Fife Brigade at the wily Independence Institute in Golden and Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, took “go away” for “go fish!”
Yesterday, the institute’s top gun, David Kopel, said he was excited by rejection because he sees it as a “victory” and a pleasant invitation to try again “because it removed the only federal court decision upholding the laws from the books,” according to an AP story.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
Uh, yeah. Sounds like an lawyer getting paid by the hour. Hopefully these wily west sheriffs aren’t spending anything that even remotely smells like taxpayer money to have this dude help the posse of lost law-enforcers shoot themselves in the foot.
If the anti-gun-control groupies are this fired up over these two trifling laws, imagine what might happen if the state Legislature tries to go for real gun control measures, such as mandatory gun locks, or, God forbid, mental health requirements for gun ownership. Draw your own conclusions about how many of these rabid gun lovers collecting personal arsenals and threatening publicly to kill anyone that even tries to take limit their guns would pass even the most innocuous of mental health exams.
Hopefully, the Magnificent 64— now down to 55 — won’t be responsible for making sure crazy people don’t have guns, or really, anything else that is important to Colorado’s welfare or safety.
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