January 26, 2016 01:48 PM UTC

Gun Bills Head For Usual Fate, With One Improbable Maybe

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Independent’s Corey Hutchins reports, Republicans in the Colorado General Assembly led by Sen. Tim Neville are pushing most of the usual slate of pro-gun bills in 2016, starting with another attempt to repeal the 15-round magazine limit passed in 2013:

Lawmakers in Colorado, including one state Senator who’s running for higher office, have introduced at least three measures to expand gun rights so far at the start of this year’s legislative session.

One of the bills, unsurprisingly, is aimed at rolling back a 2013 package of legislation that limited to 15 the amount of bullets a gun magazine could hold in Colorado. One of the sponsors in the Senate is Tim Neville of Jefferson County who is running in the crowded GOP primary field for U.S. Senate this year. The bill is pretty simple: It repeals the 2013 law, and “declares that this act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety.”

Another bill, also sponsored in part by Neville, would extend to the workplace the state’s ‘Make My Day’ law, which allows Coloradans to use deadly force against intruders in their own homes under certain circumstances. This new law would allow the same ability to “owners, managers, and employees of businesses.”

A third measure would scrap the permitting requirements for carrying a concealed weapon in Colorado.

The last of these bills mentioned, Senate Bill 16-017 eliminating additional permit requirements to carry concealed weapons, is up for a hearing tomorrow in the Senate State Affairs Committee. Interestingly, we have not seen a bill yet to repeal the requirement for background checks to be conducted for most gun purchases, something gun rights supporters has clamored loudly for but has always been the most popular of the 2013 reform measures. Today, polling in Colorado and nationally shows consistent and enduring support for expanding background checks, making Colorado a leader on the issue–so maybe this is a fight we won’t be having in Colorado in 2016.

The one proposal on which we might yet see some fireworks in the legislature this year would be a much-threatened but as-yet unintroduced bill to relax the magazine limit law from the current 15 maximum rounds to 30 rounds–a change that would allow the 30-round high-capacity mags considered “standard” on AR-15 assault rifles to be sold in Colorado once again. This idea was championed last year by Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute as an incremental measure, but was summarily rejected by Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and their powerful bloc of legislators–who say any magazine limit “compromise” short of full repeal would be unacceptable.

The latest word as we understand it is that Democrats have no interest in either helping Caldara look good or defusing internal conflict between Republicans–which sharply reduces the possibility of the Democratic defections Caldara would need. That combined with the RMGO’s lockdown of its member legislators against raising the mag limit seems to indicate that no such end run is in the offing.

If that changes you’ll know, because nothing turns up the volume at the Capitol like a good squabble over guns.