Democrats on Wednesday were poised to reject three Republican bills to loosen restrictions on guns as the renewed national debate about firearms sparked by last week’s south Florida high school massacre flares in the legislature and across Colorado.
The GOP measures seek to allow people with concealed-carry permits to take weapons onto school grounds, repeal the state’s contentious 2013 ban on high-capacity magazines and allow business owners and employees to use deadly force against intruders, similar to the “make my day” law for homeowners.
Republicans argue that the bills seek to make Colorado kids and residents safer. Democrats and firearm-control advocates say the answer to gun violence is not more guns.
The debate over guns is once more spiking across Colorado, from the Boulder City Council to a Tuesday night town hall for U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman and during protests at the state Capitol. But with Republican state lawmakers signaling they are unwilling to pass gun-control legislation and with their Democratic counterparts having no such bills on hand, large-scale changes anytime soon appear as unlikely in Colorado as they do nationally.
The GOP bills being heard Wednesday in the Democrat-controlled House’s State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, stoked protests and anger at the Capitol on both sides of the aisle. The legislation has been introduced — and rejected by Democrats — in years past, but the national conversation thrust the efforts into a brighter spotlight, drawing dozens to testify in a room packed with mass-shooting survivors, activists and children.
After more than six hours of testimony into Wednesday night, committee members had only weighed in on one of the three bills, voting down the measure that would have allowed concealed carry on school grounds and another that would have allowed business owners and employees to use deadly force against intruders.
“I feel a little bit like the movie ‘Groundhog Day,'” testified Ken Toltz, a Boulder gun-control advocate and co-founder of Safe Campus Colorado. “Here we are again with the exact same bill. … How is it year after year that somebody in this state legislature brings forth the same bad idea, and particularly on a week like this after seven days of horror from Parkland, Fla.? I’m left with the conclusion that this is all about ideology.”
At a midday Wednesday rally outside the statehouse, before the legislation was heard, activists and high school students waved signs and demanded an end to gun violence. They also held a minutes-long “lie-in” to honor the 17 victims of last week’s Florida high school shooting.
Colorado Ceasefire called for a so-called “red-flag law” — like ones that exist in five other states — that allows judges to take guns away from a person they determine is a threat.
“We are working in the Capitol, thinking through what are sensible gun reforms that are appropriate for Colorado,” Assistant House Majority Leader Alec Garnett, a Denver Democrat, said without offering specifics. “I think there’s ways we can work in a bipartisan manner, and we are going to keep those discussions going.”
House Speaker Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, said, “We are reviewing our current laws to see what measures the legislature could take (while also calling for federal action).”
Republicans push back
But GOP leaders at the statehouse argue that gun-control bills wouldn’t have stopped Nikolas Cruz, who is charged in the Feb. 14 shooting deaths at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
“We have to look at why we put our children into these gun-free zones and leave them unprotected,” said the top Republican in the legislature, Senate President Kevin Grantham of Cañon City. “But just the sweeping gun regulations that, at the end of the day, have no effect on the fact that we leave our children unprotected and in an enclosed area just begging for unstable people to come in and commit heinous acts like this, then (that shows) we’re not serious about the conversation.”
Echoing that sentiment was Senate President pro tem Jerry Sonnenberg, a Sterling Republican, who believes there needs to be an examination of the nation’s culture and how kids are disciplined in schools.
“I’m curious to what law could we have put in place that would have prevented Florida or, quite frankly, any of the others,” he said. “We have a society issue, I would argue, that has changed over the last couple of decades.”
In terms of gun-safety measures at the legislature this year, a bill that would increase prison time for burglars who steal guns won initial approval last week in the House. Senate Republicans have signaled they are likely to vote down a measure from a Senate Democrat to ban bump stocks like the ones used in October’s massacre in Las Vegas.
Another piece of firearm legislation that is poised to fail — in the Democratic-controlled House — seeks to allow Coloradans to carry concealed guns without a permit. It also passed its first hurdle in the GOP-controlled Senate.
Beyond the legislature
Conversations about gun control go far beyond the state Capitol’s gold dome.
Coffman, an Aurora Republican, was booed during a town hall at Cherry Creek High School when he said he was willing to discuss “reasonable restrictions within the parameters of the Second Amendment.”
Colorado’s other GOP members of Congress have been facing similar backlash from Democrats and left-leaning groups, specifically over their campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association. They are generally calling for better mental health treatment options as one remedy to gun violence, while Democratic federal lawmakers want stricter regulation of firearms.
The Boulder City Council announced Tuesday it would weigh a ban on assault rifles, high-capacity magazines (which are already barred under Colorado law) and bump stocks.
“It felt like a no-brainer to propose this,” Councilwoman Jill Adler Grano said. “Each time we have a shooting, it is a reminder of the fact that we are failing miserably at protecting our citizens. … It’s time for municipalities to take the lead on this.”
Wednesday at the state Capitol, 18-year-old Hector Valles said he was inspired to rally by students in Florida. The Littleton High School senior and his friends piled into cars at the last minute to demonstrate before the GOP bills were presented.
“It’s important to get our voices heard,” he said. “We want to be the generation to end (school shootings).”
The Associated Press and the Boulder Daily Camera contributed to this report.