March 19, 2024 12:27 PM UTC

Sad RMGO Rally Demonstrates How Much Colorado Has Shifted on Gun Safety

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado legislature is discussing several gun violence prevention (GVP) bills this session after passing a handful of important changes in 2023. We could point you toward polling data showing how the issue of gun violence has changed in Colorado since Colorado’s “no compromise” gun rights group, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO), helped lead a recall of a few legislators in 2013 over GVP legislation.

Or, we could just show you a picture:

The decline of RMGO as a relevant political force in Colorado has coincided with a significant shift in not just public opinion — but public demands for more action on GVP. There was a time when RMGO was able to strong-arm Republican legislators into opposing even the most basic, common sense legislation on GVP. This is no longer that time.

Today’s RMGO rally consisted of a few dozen (at best) diehard gun rights supporters standing outside the West Steps of the State Capitol alongside two whole Republican lawmakers: Reps. Ty Winter and Ryan Armagost. Republicans are stuck with a micro-minority in the state legislature, holding just 31 of a total 100 seats in the House and Senate, but it’s still pretty pathetic that RMGO could only convince two sitting lawmakers to show up at their fist-shaking rally.

These gun lovers arrived for the 8:00 am rally in order to voice their opposition to any effort toward reducing gun violence. There are about a dozen bills in the current legislative session dealing with firearms, but RMGO is particularly incensed about five of them. We’ll break those down below:

• HB24-1174: Concealed Carry Permits & Training

This is a fairly simple piece of legislation that just requires a more comprehensive training course for people seeking a concealed carry permit (CCP). It shouldn’t be a big deal for reasonable people. This kind of thing happens with a lot of licenses issued by state or local governments; about a decade ago, Colorado lawmakers overhauled the process for teenagers to acquire a driver’s license, for example.

• HB24-1270: Firearm Liability Insurance Requirement

If you own a firearm, you should have liability insurance coverage in case of an accidental discharge of said firearm. To use a similar analogy, Colorado has long mandated this sort of thing for anyone who drives a vehicle.

• HB24-1292: Prohibit Certain Weapons Used in Mass Shootings

This is the 2024 of an “assault weapons ban” that failed to gain traction at the end of the last legislative session. The bill defines the term “assault weapon” and prohibits a person from manufacturing, importing, purchasing, selling, offering to sell, or transferring ownership of an assault weapon. The bill further prohibits a person from possessing a rapid-fire trigger activator. A person in violation of the prohibitions will be assessed a first-time penalty of $250,000 and $500,000 for each subsequent violation.

• SB24-003: Colorado Bureau of Investigation Authority to Investigate Firearms Crimes

The leadership at RMGO derisively (and absurdly) calls this the “CBI Gestapo” bill. What this bill actually does is give the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) the ability to more comprehensively investigate illegal activity involving firearms.

• SB24-066: Firearms Merchant Category Code

This bill creates a merchant category code for the purchase of firearms and ammunition in order to assist law enforcement in identifying patterns that could precipitate a mass shooting event. Naturally, RMGO believes this will lead to some sort of “gun registry” that the United Nations will use when it institutes its “New World Order,” or however this conspiracy theory goes.

There are other bills, all of which RMGO opposes, that push for common sense approaches for securing firearms in a vehicle (HB24-1348) and require a permit for anyone who wants to sell firearms to the public (HB24-1353). You might be surprised to note that some of these things aren’t already laws in Colorado.

Far-right gun nuts such as Lesley Hollywood are even having trouble coming up with a useful narrative to use in opposition to some of these bills because most of them are difficult to argue against with a straight face.

Whether any of these bills pass or fail won’t have much to do with the rabid gun lovers at RMGO, which has lately reduced itself to sending ridiculous “cease and desist” letters to Democratic officials.

Perhaps people have merely realized that RMGO, the NRA, or any other group can’t threaten officials with something worse than the endless mass shootings that already plague American society.