Colorado’s Democratic-controlled House on Sunday passed a bill that would ban the sale and transfer of semiautomatic firearms, a major step for the legislation after roughly the same bill was swiftly killed by Democrats last year.
The bill, which passed on a 35-27 vote, is now on its way to the Democratic-led state Senate. If it passes there, it could bring Colorado in line with 10 other states — including California, New York and Illinois — that have prohibitions on semiautomatic guns.
But even in a state plagued by some of the nation’s worst mass shootings, such legislation faces headwinds.
Colorado’s political history is purple, shifting blue only recently. The bill’s chances of success in the state Senate are lower than they were in the House, where Democrats have a 46-19 majority and a bigger far-left flank. Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, has indicated his wariness over such a ban.
Supreme Court shoots it down in 3-2-1…
The Heller ruling in 2008 already decided this.
Washington D.C. had effectively banned pistols, the court ruled then:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/570/
“As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate, the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right. The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights,[Footnote 27] banning from the home “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,” 478 F. 3d, at 400, would fail constitutional muster.”
So, no, you can’t ban an entire class of weapon.
You absolutely can. Full-auto weapons are banned for general purchase in pretty much every state. Things like explosive-based guns are also banned. Flame-throwers, etc.
Heller is a clear violation of state’s rights to pass more-restrictive laws than the federal level. We’ve had tons of gun laws that restrict purchases and types of firearms for decades anyways on the state and local level.
General purchase, yes, but you can still buy one if you fill out the appropriate ATF paperwork and pay the HUGE transfer fees.
https://www.therange702.com/blog/can-you-legally-own-a-machine-gun/
"To legally own a machine gun, you first have to apply for approval from the federal government. After purchasing the gun, you must fill out an ATF Form 4 application and wait for approval before taking possession of the firearm. The FBI conducts a thorough background check using fingerprints and a photograph required with your application, which could take 9 to 12 months to process. The gun will need to stay in possession of the previous owner until the process is complete.
In addition, you will need to pay a $200 “NFA tax stamp” for each weapon transaction. If approved, you will receive your paperwork in the mail, including a permit with the listed lawful possessor of the firearm. Only then can you take the machine gun home and possess it legally."
This Colorado ruling doesn’t allow for that.
To be fair, even if it did, I could still see it being unconstitutional to the supreme court.
We don’t want to admit it, but we kind of weasled our way to ban automatic weapons which is why there is only a “practical” ban instead of an absolute one.
i.e. You can legally own full-auto weapons if you spend the money to do so.
I think it would be very interesting if some right-wingers tried to do something like this but frame it as though you can “only buy handguns/semiautomatics made before a certain date, gotta pay all these fees, etc.”
That could force the supreme court to look at whether the original “ban” on automatics is actually constitutional.
Oh, yeah, and with THIS court? That is absolutely a road Democrats should not even CONSIDER wanting to go down.
The ban was enacted as part of the Gun Control Act of 1968:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Control_Act_of_1968
Can you imagine if they just tossed that out?
According to Interstate Commerce and the Supremacy Clauses, the States actually do not have that right, they just haven’t been sued on those grounds directly.
The whole bit about being primarily used for a lawful purpose seems important.
Yes, that lawful purpose. Self defense. It’s not just “any” or “a” lawful purpose. Self defense goes to the very heart of the Heller ruling.
Why? Does any other right depend on that?
Maybe it isn’t a right and maybe it was a temporary provision for a frontier society to quickly setup a temporary army to deal with slave revolts.
I don’t know about that. In general, rocket-propelled weapons and land mines are not legal for ownership. You even need special dispensation to own a fully automatic machine gun.
Those are explosives, completely different deal from firearms. Supreme court ruled on that too, Caetano, 2016:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/577/411/
“The Second Amendment covers all weapons that may be defined as ‘bearable arms,’ even if they did not exist when the Bill of Rights was drafted and are not commonly used in warfare."
Caetano is really my favorite of these rulings because it started out having nothing to do with guns.
Woman, scared of her ex, bought a stun gun for protection. Massachusetts arrested her, stated “stun guns didn’t exist back then, no 2nd Amendment right to a stun gun.”
Court “um, actually’d” them pretty hard.
So, you can’t ban a class of gun (Heller, 2008) and you can’t ban a bearable arm just because it didn’t exist 200 years ago (Caetano, 2016.)
And the court has only gotten MORE conservative since then, not less. :( This new ban is going to go nowhere fast, shame Colorado taxpayers are going to have to pay for a losing case.
Thank you for at least bringing the realistic approach to this conversation. It is by no means ideal, and sets us back from actually making streets safer. Anyone can purchase just about anything weapon-related in a country where political chaos and cultural divisions are a dime a dozen is really a cocktail for disaster. Of course people are going to lean on the argument that if the bad guys have the weapons than good guys shouldn’t be banned from having their own, because the number of untraceable weapons is already past critical mass.
State by state gun laws are SUPER weird too. As an Oregonian, I can own multiple weapons that are illegal in California. You can get in trouble just by crossing the border.
For example, this little guy (Bond Arms Ranger II) is legal in Oregon, illegal in California:
You might ask “What’s the big deal? It’s a pistol, not a rifle, it only holds 2 shots, it’s a breech loader, so not even semi-automatic… what’s the problem?”
Problem is that it’s a smooth bore .45 that can also fire .410 shotgun shells. California classifies it as a short barrelled shotgun.
I’ve never fired one of those, but it sounds like the kick on it would be crazy. Very small weapon with very large ammo just seems like a recipe for wild kickback. I could be wrong, though. Maybe the grip design helps?
Shotgun shells come in many varieties and loads of poweder, you absolutely can make that a wrist snapper but if you pick the right shells, especially for .410 you won’t be too bad. .45 would probably have a lot of muzzle raise but I wouldn’t imagine that to kick too forcefully, definitely handle-able but you’re probably not ripping fast on target follow up shots with that.
Grip and the weight. It’s 1.5 pounds.
Do stun guns use an explosive propellant? I never thought of it before, but it would make sense that they do. I only ask because I know that weapons that don’t aren’t classified as guns.
Stuff like coil guns, rail guns, and compressed air rifles aren’t controlled by gun laws and are unaffected by bans like this because they’re not “firearms.” For example, some states have a ban on putting a silencer on a gun, but nothing about owning a silencer. So it’s perfectly legal to put one on a compressed air rifle, and with how quiet they are, that makes them whisper quiet. Plus, 80% lowers aren’t considered guns either, so unless this law specifically calls them out, it’s still legal for anybody to go online and have one shipped right to their door. You usually don’t even need an F-ID card for that. Hell, even gunpowder doesn’t require a license below a certain amount.
Laws like this are, at best, a post hoc solution to a national and cultural problem, and more often than not just security theater.
You said ‘weapons,’ not ‘guns.’ If you meant guns, that would be a different issue. However, even there, fully-automatic machine guns are not generally available with a simple background check like other guns. You have to apply for a federal license to get them. So they are treated quite differently.
No, but as noted above, there IS a path to legal machine gun ownership, it’s just slightly more involved and expensive.
So restricted to the wealthy?
Pretty much, it’s a tax on the poors. They’ll have to be satisfied with bump stocks and hellfire triggers.
I would personally argue that expanding that to other guns would be a huge step up from what we have now. It might even prevent some mass shootings.
It could, but as with the machine gun ban, it needs to be done at a Federal level.
Fuck the pooooooooooor
Do you think maybe the fact that you are suggesting that poor people need guns to protect themselves is indicative of a much bigger problem?
You can own both of those things, you just need the explosives permit from the BAFTE, and they are very strict about the permitting and furthermore the storage, etc of those items. If you don’t mind the FBI examining your butthole and the buttholes of everyone you know, along with massive fees and regular inspections of the items and their storage facility, then have at it.