Legislation filed for debate in the 2019 session of the Colorado General Assembly is starting to appear on the legislature’s website, and here’s one every Colorado voter should be aware of, regardless of how you feel about the hot-button underlying issue:
House Bill 19-1021 is a bill to repeal Colorado’s 15-round limit on gun magazine capacity. This bill is scheduled for certain death in the House State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee at an unspecified time in the next few weeks.
But the point is not really the bill, which Republicans in the Colorado legislature have introduced every year since the magazine limit became law. It is worth noting that the 15-round mag limit in particular outraged the gun lobby nationwide and helped drive the 2013 recall elections which ousted two Democratic Senators and promoted the resignation of a third. In 2014, gun-rights groups managed a reasonable crowd to testify in hearings on repeal bills, but since then turnout has steadily dwindled.
The real problem here is the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Lori Saine. In December of 2017, Rep. Saine was boarding a flight at Denver International Airport to receive an award from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) at that organization’s annual conference. A search of her purse at the airport revealed a loaded 9mm semiautomatic handgun that Saine had “forgotten” and brought with her. Saine was arrested when she stopped cooperating with security officers, but avoided charges by profusely claiming ignorance of the loaded gun in her purse.
Because this incident did not result in a criminal conviction, Rep. Saine’s right to possess guns–and presumably the concealed carry permit that allowed her to carry one in her purse–was not affected. But in every political sense, the event renders Saine the worst possible legislator of any serving in the Colorado General Assembly to carry a bill to weaken Colorado’s gun laws. We legitimately do not understand why Republicans would allow Saine to so perfectly undermine legislation we assume they would actually like to pass.
If anyone has an explanation that doesn’t boil down to some kind of bad joke, we’d like to hear it.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
BY: QuBase
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: 2Jung2Die
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: notaskinnycook
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: The realist
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: kwtree
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: JohnNorthofDenver
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: JohnInDenver
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: 2Jung2Die
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: SSG_Dan
IN: Weekend Open Thread
BY: JohnInDenver
IN: Weekend Open Thread
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!
The answer to your rhetorical question is that your premise is flawed. Republicans don't want this bill to pass. The want the bible hating, mofo screaming, vegan eating commie liberal democrats to kill it. That way, gun nuts will keep on giving votes and money to god fearing, bible thumping, bambi hunting, pussy grabbing Republicans.
All about optics it is, Yoda says. And they're coming to take your guns away!
No. Yoda would say: Your guns they are coming to take away.
Coming they are, your guns to take away, hmmmm?
Winner
I think you have to end the sentence with the verb…"Coming they are, your guns away to take, hmmmm?
But that is kinda splitting hairs…true.
😉
Coming they are, take away your guns they will.
"They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha." Look for this music classic, one hit wonder, from 1966, on You Tube.
Here you go, C.H.B. It's no fun without the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQMxSoZP_wA
Thanks Cook. I was in a hurry yesterday and didn't have time to dig for the link.
I agree with Voyageur here. The GOP doesn't want the legislation (and certainly doesn't expect to get it); they want the issue. When the freedom-hating Dems kill this POS, it'll energize the stump-jumping morons and keep them donating grossly unreasonable percentages of their minimum-wage incomes and/or government assistance to the advancement of wingnut causes.
As for choice of sponsor, I'm guessing that many a stump-jumping moron considers Saine, who's dumb as dog shit and crazy as the day is long, some sort of Second Amendment hero. The batshit insane Vicki Marble is term-limited come 2020, so the GOP may be looking to have Saine take over the SD-23 seat.
Wanna hear the joke? The sponsor of the original mag ban Dianna DeGette, did not know what a magazine was when she banned them.
What, she never read Playboy? Or when it comes to magazines, she's just a New Yorker kind of girl?
Oh you are good. That's punny.
Is this the "They don't know the difference between a magazine and a clip! Haw! Haw!" argument?
Nope. DeGette was under the impression once you shot the ammo out of a magazine it was no longer usable, so banning them was just common sense:
What does this have to do with Lori Saine?
Maybe he was drawing a parallel between DeGette's ignorance of weapons, and Saine's ignorance that she had a goddamned loaded pistol in her purse.
Indeed I was Curmy. Both appear to be the "worst possible legislators" for this particular issue.
One was more effective than the other, though.
True that. I would however question the efficacy of successfully passing a law intended to reduce gun deaths only to find gun deaths nearly double. Effectively passing an ineffective law is a narrow victory among these two.
Still, slightly more effective than trying to get a gun past airport security.
Wonder why that kind of security is not on the table at schools?
Because people getting an education don’t want to be xrayed, patted down, and treated like terrorists?
Just a wild guess.
I'm gonna go with a wild guess that the people in airports don't want to be treated like terrorists either.
Airports have security and don't have mass shootings.
Schools have mass shootings and don't have security.
Now put your education to use and conceive a logical solution. If your solution is to limit the number of bullets a terrorist has before they have to reload, so you can run away or overpower them, I will suggest you return to the education system you attended and request a refund.
Because people who aren't blinded by their love of guns can see that other countries don't have hardened school security, or mass school shootings, and understand there's an easier and better way to prevent them?
Which country suggests that giving you time to run or overpower a shooter while they reload is an easier and better way to prevent school shootings than school security?
You keep avoiding the actual facts, so you don't have to face the terror of actually having to aim, I suppose.
Other countries don't have mass school shootings to the obscene extent we do. They also don't have hardened schools, with "moar gunz" like you salivate after.
They've apparently figured out a solution you're afraid of. That's understandable. Aiming is hard work.
Curmie if you really believe that schools are better off allowing a shooter to send fewer rounds into children hoping they have bad aim, rather than denying the shooter access to the children we really don't need to go further. How has that been working out for ya?
You keep using that Dr. Phil B.S., without addressing the actual cause of the problem.
It's your and your ilk's goddamned gun fetishes that's killing schoolchildren. Not the lack of a hardened facility.
Replying to your snarky comment below, since you're out of reply boxes:
Really? Your trusted news source, Fox, differs:
TIMELINE: The worst airport shootings in the last 15 years
I count 12 – and those are just "the worst" mass shootings in airports. This doesn't count the numerous instances of domestic violence, kidnapping, political assassination, simple assault, etc. Contrary to what the White House is saying, most known or suspected terrorists are also caught at airports.
We haven't had any more airplanes hijacked, I'll grant you. Probably arming the pilots and generally tightening up boarding and screening procedures has worked. But nothing is ever 100% guaranteed.
That is not a reason to give up and let everyone carry concealed in airports, however, lucrative as that might be for your line of work.
Did you actually read your link? The "worst" mass shootings in America in the past 15 years totals 3 innocent people, outside the secure zone.
Again, if you feel that being given a 1.5 second opportunity to run or overpower an armed killer is sound policy, you defy logic. When has a school shooter ever not had time to reload?
So, if in all your sweaty fantasies, the average school shooter can swap out a mag in 1.5 seconds…why do you even need a Hi-Cap mag to defend Liberty?
If a garden-variety psycho has such skills, surely a highly trained member of the Militia can do as well, right?
Very true, nobody appears to need more time to reload. It does not seem to play even a minuscule role in mass shootings. Why do you contend that it is an effective measure to prevent them? How do you consider allowing a shooter 15 shots before reloading a reasonable restriction? Wouldn't 10, 5, or 1 shot be more reasonable?
How bout 0? Why in gods name wouldn't you rather a shooter not get any shots off before stopping them? How do you do that? Pro-tip: not the way you are doing it now.
Seems to me you're ignoring the easiest and most effective solution, practiced by all those other countries that don't have school shootings.
Make people more responsible for the guns they want to carry, and make it harder for the crazies to possess them.
+10
How exactly does that get Lori Saine off the hook?
It doesn’t. This is classic Negev.
A. Gun nut does something stupid and/or dangerous, obviously pandering to the firearms industry.
b. Negev brings up something dumb a Democrat did or said, thereby hijacking the thread away from the industry pandering.
I dunno’, Negev’s well-crafted DeGette argument may have just convinced me that Lori Saine is a damn genius, . . .
. . . and that we should mandate issuance of fully automatic weapons with high capacity magazines to every U.S. citizen at the moment of birth??!!
”Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it’s an M4!”
Not the anchor babies, dio. We don't want them having guns!
This is a cheap shot at Lori and makes you look petty
Petty, like bringing a box of fried chicken to a hearing on poverty to make a stupid racist "joke"?
Bullshit. She's a disaster for GOP credibility on guns.
The part of the story about Lori-isn't-Saine and the airport that I always thought was absurd is that guns are heavy. What does she haul around in her bag that she wouldn't notice the weight of a handgun in it?