(UnitedVoice.com) – In April, just days before the 25th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, the Colorado House passed a ban on semi-automatic weapons. That legislation has now been nixed. However, a series of other gun control bills moved forward.
On Monday, May 6, State Senator Julie Gonzales (D), the Senate sponsor of HB24-1292, announced she would request that the Senate State Veterans and Military Committee indefinitely postpone the assault weapons ban bill when it came up the following day. She followed through on Tuesday, and the bill was effectively killed for the rest of the legislative session.
Gonzalez issued a statement explaining that she had conversations with her colleagues, and she decided there were more conversations to be had. She said that she was looking “forward to renewing and continuing those discussions over the interim.”
The bill would have defined an “assault weapon” under state law and prohibited the sale, manufacture, transfer, and purchase of such weapons. It would also have banned the possession of rapid-fire trigger activators, which can increase the speed at which the gun fires rounds, mimicking an automatic weapon.
Although that bill is not moving forward, several others have moved closer to becoming laws. That includes a bill giving the Colorado Bureau of Investigation more power to investigate the sale of already illegal guns and a ballot measure that would allow the state to tax the sale of ammunition and firearms.
Colorado has a long history of supporting the Second Amendment on both sides of the political aisle. But it has also experienced some of the most brutal mass shootings in the country, including Columbine on April 20, 1999, which was the worst shooting to occur in a high school until the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida.
Getting any gun bill through the state Senate will be an uphill battle.
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