Summary of hearing on gun bills, State Affiars committee

I am re-posting this in light of the server crash yesterday.

On Monday I attended the six hour long committee hearing on the five gun bills. GAG. I have tried to objectively summarize the events as I saw them. I have heard there were behind the scenes dynamics that I don't have enough details to comment on, but it is not always, and maybe never is, WYSIWYG. It is anything but transparent; the lobbyists run the place a great deal of the time.

Five bills were up for hearing, including

· abolishing mandatory CCW permits like Kansas did last week, joining Arizona
· abolishing the exclusion zone of K-12 for CCW permit holders
· abolishing the private transfer background check
· repeal the magazine limitation

Both the bills, abolishing the exclusion zone and the repeal of the private sales NICS check, were less than optimally drafted for a Democrat controlled House. It is clear, to me as former legislative director of CSSA, that the sponsors were ill served by whoever guided them in the drafting. I am confident it was not NRA inspired.

No abolition of the K-12 exclusion, allowing CCW en masse, is likely to pass even a GOP legislature. It was interesting that while the bill was a total repeal of the K-14 exclusion, almost all the supporting testimony urged passage of an exemption for teachers. I understand a bill to that effect, a more limited repeal of the exclusion, was presented last year and killed, no doubt by the same committee. This of course is what the NEA wants.

The abolition of the NICS for private transfers, in its global approach, was unlikely to pass. Several witnesses, including myself, urged a more limited approach, improving the administrative issues like record keeping databases, be implemented. I think that was receptively received by even the Democrats. But no bill doing that was offered, giving the Dems an easy pass.

On the mag bill, I should mention first that the Sheriff of Adams County, Sheriff McIntosh, sent one of his top deputies into the Swamp and he did a great job explaining that the mag ban is a non-starter for law enforcement. No other law enforcement officials appeared, knowing it was a waste of government resources. It was interesting that nobody on the committee from the Left knew anything about the Colorado bill of rights regarding self defense -- and admitted it. The two Democrat lawyers/legislators and I engaged in a lively discussion of fundamental right and strict scrutiny after Heller and how it applied to Colorado court decisions. They were not pleased to hear that the Colorado bill of rights is more broad than the 2^nd and a close to absolute prohibition of gun control. Many unhappy faces there. I expect to be assassinated any day. The repeal failed on a 6-5 vote, but the big story is that the Left is worried about the state bill of rights, something they have long ignored.

In my opinion, RMGOA is heavily involved in the drafting. RMGOA is notorious for all or nothing tactics, and therefore, typically gets nothing. So, in the pursuit of “perfect,” very good for now was sacrificed.

I feel that a working group might be useful to advise on the next year’s session so there are alternative approaches. Your thoughts?

I want to conclude with this observation. The testimony on abolishing the K-12 exclusion zone was orchestrated and included numerous (30?) hysterical people talking about the evil people having permits going into the schools and killing people, an event that as far as I know, has never happened even nationally. These people are not influenced at all by facts; it’s all about emoting hysterical, misinformed or ignorant, anti gun owner hate. These tactics are time tested as winning formulas by the Bloombergers. The ignorance is simply breathtaking. These people only talk to themselves. It was evident that they presume that CCW holders are almost universally men; in my experience as an NRA instructor, the percentage of women CCW is quite high, particularly the last three years. Most of our classes are 50+% female. The committee chair did not give me time to address the prejudice, of course. Nothing new there.

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Originally Posted by foxtrot

To my understanding those states that have K-12 ccw (e.g. teachers) are using a loophole to classify said teachers as security guards.

The K-12 exclusion is federal to my understanding. Haven't dug into that proposal but it may not work anyway if it isn't written correctly.

Disclosure: I have not heavily researched the K-12 exclusion so don't count this post as my normal hard-line stuff. This is just my current understanding without dedicated research.

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Agree with this assessment. Right now that is the only way that school district security officers can legally carry on campus. This approach certainly has merit to pursue to see if there is an appetite for such a solution that would not require a legislative fix to allow teachers in K-12 to legally carry, those that desire to at least.

I don't know if its true or not, but I heard a commentator on (I think) 710 AM earlier this week say that Dudley was behind the wording of the proposed statutes. They said that there was bipartisan support for a 30 round mag limit, but Dudley pushed for no limits, where there was not bipartisan support for that.

One thing the left is very very effective at is incrementalism. They succeed long term by not giving up and being satisfied with what they can achieve in the short term. They will take hitting singles as a contributor to long term victory. We need to do the same, especially in very much a "purple" state. Take what we can get and be back for more next year. Sure, a 30-round mag limit isn't perfect, but that eliminates the problem with full-sized handguns and most rifles.

The bill to repeal the magazine ban had passed the Colorado Senate, with three democrats voting for it. The House bill had sufficient co sponsors, Republican and Democratic, to pass in the House. Instead it was killed in the House State Affairs Committee. Rep. Joe Salazar (D) made public statements about being willing to support a change to the magazine ban to 30 rounds. He never introduced a bill or an amendment to do that. He just said it in an interview. Rep. Salazar is on The House State Affairs Committee, and had voted against the magazine ban repeal. Rep. Salazar never said that the Democratic House leadership would allow such a proposal to come to the House floor (because she would not have) nor that Gov Hickenlooper had committed to sign such a bill (because he had not done so).

The whole entire thing was a ploy. Even if RMGO had agreed to support a change to the magazine ban to up the round limit for rifle and pistol magazines to 30 rounds, there was no such bill. There was no reason to think this hypothetical bill would be considered by the full House or signed into law by the governor. And RMGO would not support such a half step, it would then make it that much harder to repeal the thing altogether, and that much harder to work to get rid of anti-gun politicians, because folks like Rep. Salazar could say they had voted with RMGO on this issue, and it wasn't their fault the House leadership never let the bill come up to a vote, or their fault the Governor vetoed it.

South Park, you didn't happen to catch the deputy's name did you? Glad to see my boss is sticking to his guns (pun intended) on all this so soon after taking office. I had heard he rated higher with the NRA than his predecessor.

Commander Gregory.

At this time, I don't think shooters have an effective ground game like when CSSA was active with NRA at the Capitol. Gun Rights Across America/Colorado did a great job when it was active but was politically unsophisticated in 2013 and in any event the fix was in. RMGOA has never passed a bill nor is it likely to because too many GOP legislators think RMGOA is more against them than for them.

We need a GOP House and Senate. Then there is room to negotiate with Waffleman. 2016 is a big election for gun owners to continue the push back.