In just a few days, a handful of new laws will go into effect in Colorado.
While the state used to be fairly pro-gun, that was a long time ago at this point. Now they’ve fully embraced the anti-gun approach to all of their ills and the media has been part of it all along.
A prime example is the headline from this piece regarding the laws going into effect: “New gun laws combat violence, limit who can acquire firearms.”
They’re already making a value judgment about the efficacy of a law that doesn’t go into effect for a few more days? Really?
It doesn’t get any better in the body of the report, either.
New gun violence prevention laws will take effect starting Wednesday, Aug. 7.
The newest laws combat gun violence by improving concealed carry permit training, hosting the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) ability to address illegal firearms, and making it easier to recognize dangerous firearm purchasing patterns.
“Concealed Carry Permits and Training,” also known as HB24-1174, requires handgun training classes to include at least eight hours of instruction, including a live-fire exercise and a written exam with a minimum passing score. It also requires handgun training classes to be held in person and include training on the safe handling of firearms and ammunition, safe storage of firearms and child safety, federal state firearm laws, interactions with law enforcement, and more.
In addition, HB24-1174 prohibits a person from being issued a permit if they have been convicted of certain misdemeanor offenses within five years of submitting a concealed carry permit application. The law also makes it a deceptive trade practice for a person to claim to be a verified firearms safety instructor unless they have been verified by a county sheriff.
Concealed carry license holders are historically the most law-abiding people in the nation, far more so than police, judges, or politicians. Restricting concealed carry in these ways isn’t making anyone any safer.
What this really does is make it that much harder for people to get a permit, effectively denying them to many who live in crime-blighted neighborhoods which also tend to be economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. You know, poor people.
But screw those peasants, right?
Yet that’s far from all that Colorado is kicking into gear.
SB24-003 allows the CBI to investigate illegal activity involving firearms. The law allocates $1.7 million to the Department of Public Safety to create a team that investigates individuals convicted of felonies who are attempting to illegally purchase a gun, or possess a ghost gun.
While SB24-066 requires payment card networks such as Visa or Mastercard to provide a specific merchant code for businesses that sell firearms and ammunition. These codes allow banks to recognize dangerous firearm purchasing patterns and report them to law enforcement.
A report by Guns Down America found that a policy like SB24-066 could have prevented many mass shootings, including the Aurora movie theater shooting and Pulse Nightclub shooting.
I’m not going to get into anything on cracking down on felons trying to buy guns, except to note that a lot of the time, what we’ve got is someone with a similar name or something getting flagged in NICS by accident.
As for the MCC code thing, well, we’re definitely going to get into it.
First, the code won’t flag gun purchases. It’ll flag purchases from stores that sell guns. Yet most such stores sell a lot of other things. Since one of the biggest options for gun purchases in my hometown is pawn shops, that means literally anything I buy from a pawn shop in Colorado gets flagged the same as if I buy a firearm. Someone replacing power tools that were stolen out of their garage may well get flagged for suspicious gun purchases.
“But Guns Down America found-“
Shut up.
Guns Down America is an anti-gun organization that has this graphic up to greet you when you visit their web page.
They actively say their goal is fewer guns. That alone should raise a lot of red flags about their potential biases.
The truth is that they don’t know what suspicious activity looks like. They’re like the women on The View freaking out over the would-be assassin having 50 whole rounds of ammo…or, as we tend to think of it, a box or two.
So what’s more likely to happen is that this law will go into effect and so many law-abiding people get flagged for “suspicious gun purchase history” that it starts to get ignored entirely.
Colorado is a beautiful state. I didn’t get to spend much time there, but I always wanted to go back.
Sometimes, though, this kind of ugly wipes out a state’s natural beauty.
