Today, Gov. Hickenlooper signed three gun control bills into law:
HB1224 – Bans magazines with a capacity greater than fifteen rounds and makes magazines below that limit that have a removable floor plate illegal because you can install a magazine extender to increase their capacity (that means virtually all existing magazines since floor plates are generally removable to facilitate cleaning or spring replacement).
HB1228 – Imposes a “gun tax” for a Colorado Bureau of Investigation background check when purchasing a firearm, even though the FBI will do the background checks for free.
HB1229 – Criminalizes the private transfer of a firearm, so you can’t give a gun to your son or daughter, or loan a gun to your friend or to a neighbor who’s afraid that a former husband or boyfriend might come after her.
Jon Caldara, President of the Independence Institute, wasted no time making it clear that these bills will be challenged in court. Here is the complete text of his email update:
“Over? Did you say it’s ‘over’? Nothing is over until we decide it is. Was it over when the Germans bomber Pearl Harbor? Hell no! And it ain’t over now!” – John Blutarsky
Today Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper confirmed Colorado as a pawn in a national game of gun control. He signed three anti-Second Amendment bills into law, making our previously liberty-loving state into the nation’s Hate State against gun owners.
Independence Institute was the lead voice educating policy makers and the Governor himself of the dangers and sloppiness of these bills. They wouldn’t listen to us. They wouldn’t listen to Coloradans. They instead listened to Mayor Bloomberg and Joe Biden, who called legislators and Hickenlooper personally.
We urged the Governor to veto the bills and send them back to the legislature for re-drafting. Our Second Amendment expert, Dave Kopel, told him that the magazine ban is horribly miswritten, with numerous constitutional problems, even beyond the core Second Amendment issue.
But the national anti-gun interests have more influence in Colorado than we citizens. Now the sale or transfer of nearly every gun magazine in Colorado will be crime, because almost every single magazine is “readily convertible” to hold more than 15 rounds. Watch our video on this here.
And due to the must “maintain continuous possession” clause to grandfather in previously owned mags, I won’t be able to teach my daughter how to shoot my gun – she cannot hold the gun that uses the original magazine. My brother, a volunteer gun range officer will not be able to assist a gun student with a malfunctioning gun. As he says in this op-ed, he will have to choose between keeping the gun range safe or becoming a criminal. A husband cannot lend his gun with an original magazine to his wife. Watch our video on this here.
All 62 County Sheriffs vigorously opposed these bills. Many say that won’t enforce them when they become law because they cannot be enforced.
We have said for years that Colorado is the national test case to turn a freedom-loving western state into a progressive strong hold. Today Colorado citizens learned the hard way that elections have consequences. Today our Governor cemented our path to become California.
But I guarantee you, this fight has just begun. We at Independence love Colorado and love liberty too much to just sit back and watch in dismay.
Today I am proud to announce that the Independence Institute will lead the civil rights lawsuit against the State of Colorado to free us from these unconstitutional laws.
Our lawsuit will be based on the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, among other grounds. The lawsuit will be brought on behalf of a large coalition of local and national law enforcement, including many of the Sheriffs who opposed the bills, disability rights organizations, gun safety organizations, civil rights organizations, and others.
Lead attorney in the lawsuit will be Dave Kopel, who is also a Denver University Adjunct Professor of Constitutional Law. Kopel served on the U.S. Supreme Court oral argument team which won the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller. His briefs and scholarship have been cited by Justices Alito, Breyer, and Stevens, and by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, among others.
This will be a long and expensive legal battle. But that is nothing new to us. We are honored to fight for Freedom, to fight for Colorado. We are honored to fight for you.
I’ve just donated $100 on top of my usual annual contributions. If you’re a Colorado resident and either a gun owner or just concerned about our rights and freedoms, please join me in supporting this legal battle. Go to www.i2i.org and click the “Click Here to Donate” button.
