Colorado ballot initiative update

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Rio Laxas

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Today I received this email from Tim LeVier, who is organizing the ballot initiative to repeal HB13-1224:
By way of update, I wanted to alert you that we appeared on the Mike Rosen show this AM on 850 KOA in the Denver area. If you didn't have a chance to listen (as you mentioned you are currently out of state) you can do so at your leisure here: http://www.850koa.com/cc-common/pod...dcast=Rosen03-28-13-10AM_1364491476_19733.mp3

Since I last emailed you, my position has fortified and the official ballot language is as follows:

Section 32. Gun magazines – no limitation or restriction.

No law, except a law enacted by a vote of the people, shall restrict or limit the right of the people to purchase or possess ammunition storage and feeding devices of any capacity.

As you know, the constitution and our rights in this nation can be given up by the people if there is enough support for it. With that in mind, I don't think we should run and hide from that fact, but face it head on and embrace its power. By including the exception in the language of my bill that allows a vote of the people to restrict magazine size, I prevent a judge from crafting a ruling that might say absolute bans on such laws is unacceptable - that the legislature needs the power to act and infringe the people's rights.

With my language we are plain to the court. We say we allow magazine restrictions and the remedy is to implement them is a vote of the people. It also for the same reasons should remove the legislature from gaining standing in front of a court and suing in the first place. They have a mechanism that we give them.

I hope we can still count on your support. If you do have any argument with my bill or position - I do plead with you to confront me with your points. The weakest person in the room is the one with confirmation bias. Only the individual that listens to dissent will improve his position and sound logical and rational in the end.

We've secured our Issue Committee and a web domain. Now everyone can support us financially at putittothepeople.com

Many thanks for your original email

Tim LeVier
Click to expand...

Please consider donating towards this effort to repeal HB1224 at www.putittothepeople.com or by check to:
Put it to the People.
1691 W Dry Creek Rd.
Littleton, CO 80120.
 
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except a law enacted by a vote of the people,
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By what percent majority? 51%. 67%. 75%? How big does the majority need to be to take away the rights of the remaining minority? I would settle for no less than 75%. And I really don't like that.

“Rights are not supposed to be open to popularity contests." --Rachel Maddow
 
I agree and I personally would prefer that it firmly preclude the future possibility of this kind of legislation. I have expressed this opinion to Tim, who is organizing this effort. I believe this ballot initiative is operating under the assumption that the majority of Coloradans don't want this legislation and that future efforts won't pass a popular vote. I am not presently a resident of Colorado (just a property owner there) so at this time I only have the ability to offer moral and financial support to this fight. This is currently the only ballot initiative that I am aware of that is focused on repealing HB1224, so I have a chosen to support it at this time, despite it not being exactly what I want.
 
Would the percent and other issues be brought up in the ballot initiative in the future as the current law ( no restrictions on capacity ) is challenged? We have to get the current law overridden first.
 
How effective that language would be probably depends on the wording of the state constitution.

As a general principle, legislatures cannot bind future legislatures. So a law saying "No future legislature may..." is automatically void.

Now if the state constitution says that a successfully passed initiative petition is binding on future legislatures, that's a different story. But I'd bet $5 it doesn't say that.

If the language is an amendment to the state constitution, then it clearly does bind future legislatures.

It's a great cause. Go for it. I'll help if I can. But it's a big effort and worth getting the legal stuff right before you launch. I have my suspicions about this language.
 
Guess I'm a real pessimist when it comes to Colorado voters. I believe the majority of anti-gun people in Colorado live in the Denver metro area. There would be enough votes there to change a magazine limit to say, less than 10 rounds, and do away with any grandfather clause, or even worse.

I think any such change to the state constitution would backfire on the gun owners.

Just me,
Mike
 
MRH, if there is a majority that would vote to lower limits to 10, 7, 1, 0 there is no majority to pass this. This on the ballot is really the litmus test for the state. If it fails, might as well give up and move because it will only get worse.
 
I'd like to see something a bit more broad in its scope with regards to rescinding and limiting restrictions on 2A. I feel that focusing on magazine capacity puts too fine of a point on it for the average voter and you inevitably get sucked into the pointless "how many rounds is enough" debate.
 
JRH6856 said:
By what percent majority? 51%. 67%. 75%? How big does the majority need to be to take away the rights of the remaining minority? I would settle for no less than 75%. And I really don't like that.

“Rights are not supposed to be open to popularity contests." --Rachel Maddow
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I agree with this.. the only way to 'take away a right', is to amend the Constitution, that requires ratification by 38 of 50 states. No simple majority will do.

And a state, though it has all the 'powers' not reserved for the federal government (though it seems nobody plays by the 10th anymore), doesn't have the ability to squash, at a state level, the rights protected at a federal level.
 
JMO, but in the end I don't think the initiative petition will matter. The constitutional law experts I read say that any arbitrary limit on magazine capacity is as unconstitutional as banning handguns. I expect that the issue will end up in the Supreme Court, which will put an end to that particular brand of nonsense.

The energy might better be directed toward a recall petition against those who prominently sponsored the bill. Throw the bums out.
 
denton said:
JMO, but in the end I don't think the initiative petition will matter. The constitutional law experts I read say that any arbitrary limit on magazine capacity is as unconstitutional as banning handguns. I expect that the issue will end up in the Supreme Court, which will put an end to that particular brand of nonsense.

The energy might better be directed toward a recall petition against those who prominently sponsored the bill. Throw the bums out.
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True. To have a case seen however, actual damage/s must be shown. That magazine manufacturer would have a case to present to the courts.
 
denton said:
JMO, but in the end I don't think the initiative petition will matter. The constitutional law experts I read say that any arbitrary limit on magazine capacity is as unconstitutional as banning handguns. I expect that the issue will end up in the Supreme Court, which will put an end to that particular brand of nonsense.

The energy might better be directed toward a recall petition against those who prominently sponsored the bill. Throw the bums out.
Click to expand...
How SCOTUS puts an end to it will depend on when it reaches them, and the makeup of the court when it does. It could end differently then you expect.
 
Don't we have like 3 or 4 different ballot initiatives gathering signatures, all pertaining to repeal one or more of the gun control laws recently passed?

Surely all 3 or 4 won't appear on the ballot, right?

I'm not too particularly fond of any of the ones that I've seen because they all seem to be a little distasteful for the average non-gun owning voter and I'm afraid that more of them will be at the voting booth in 2014 than those of us who are rabidly pro-2A and mad about the new laws. I might just be too diplomatic or PC, I don't know, but I like the simple and generic one that says something along the lines of...

No law shall stand/be passed in the state of Colorado that exceeds the current federal gun restrictions.

Doing it this way doesn't even give the people the power to enact gun control by way of popular vote/ballot initiative. It also, not only repeals the recently signed laws but repeals a good many more. It might also declare Colorado a 'constitutional carry' state.

I like the simple, palatable nature of such a ballot question. It doesn't talk about magazines, background checks, nothing... but it covers them all.
 
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I would worry that if for whatever reason the Government in Washington passed some serious gun control legislation, that would open the door for the Colorado legislature to walk through. It's not good to offer them an opportunity.
 
To have a case seen however, actual damage/s must be shown.
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Yes, that's true. But it may be easier than it seems. In the case of Heller, they found a group of people who wanted firearms and were denied.

As pointed out, predicting what will happen in the Supreme Court can be bad for your reputation as a forecaster. However, most of the press completely misses the main rulings in Heller. The two key rulings were 1) There is a constitutionally guaranteed individual right to keep and bear arms, and 2) The Miller decision defined which firearms are covered, namely those that are commonly held for lawful purposes. And, oh, by the way, handguns are an example of that. The ruling is not limited to handguns, and it is not limited to the home.

It is a well established legal doctrine that all things essential to a fundamental right are as protected as the right itself. So if there is a right to keep and bear arms, there is a right to have all the necessary pieces of firearms, such as magazines. And none of the restrictions placed on the right can be arbitrary. If you limit magazines to 15 rounds, you'd better be able to show very clearly that something gawdawful happens when you add that 16th round.

Finally, the Supreme Court only extremely rarely reverses itself. The theory is that it is better to endure a small or even medium size error than to have an ever-changing legal landscape. They are extremely precedent bound. Heller was beautifully reasoned and written, and will never be reversed.

So, while nothing is a lead-pipe cinch, I think we have reason for optimism in the long game. I expect that we will have a round of cases that reach the Supreme Court, and that much of the current nonsense will be put to bed permanently.
 
CoRoMo said:
but I like the simple and generic one that says something along the lines of...

No law shall stand/be passed in the state of Colorado that exceeds the current federal gun restrictions.

Doing it this way doesn't even give the people the power to enact gun control by way of popular vote/ballot initiative. It also, not only repeals the recently signed laws but repeals a good many more. I might also declare Colorado a 'constitutional carry' state.

I like the simple, palatable nature of such a ballot question. It doesn't talk about magazines, background checks, nothing... but it covers them all.
Click to expand...

And, as you know from my previous posts on this topic, I fully agree with what you said in this post. It's simple, broad in scope, and carefully worded in a way to avoid being offensive to the general (neutralish) populous.

By the way, if you didn't see the news today, the POTUS is coming to Colorado on Wednesday to further push his gun control agenda, apparently by grabbing some of my colleagues in LE to sit behind him on a stage as he discusses this issue. I've talked to at least 40 officers about this issue since it came up (the news hit us before it hit the news), none of the guys I've talked with are planning to be on that stage, for whatever it's worth.

Here's an article about it: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/new...ama-to-talk-gun-control-in-colorado-wednesday
 
The ballot initiative is excellent! But you're really gonna have to work on the distribution and getting the requisite number of signatures. The secretary will do everything possible to invalidate those signatures, so you'll need plenty of extras above the minimum number, and you'll want to obtain them from all parts of the state so that you'll have voters from all parts of the state showing up to vote for it when the time to vote comes.

And don't let anyone tell you it'll hurt the rtkba in Colorado, don't get discouraged! If you get enough voters to show up and vote for the initiative, and to vote against the idiot politicians who voted for this foolishness, you'll send a heck of a message to a certain party that they really screwed up. Keep up the good fight!
 
coloradokelvin said:
I've talked to at least 40 officers about this issue since it came up (the news hit us before it hit the news), none of the guys I've talked with are planning to be on that stage, for whatever it's worth.
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Or, one better, have them sit up there, just get up in the middle of Obama's speech and walk off the stage. I think that might send a good message about the 'quality' of his message.

I am rooting for Colorado to turn this mess around. I think its important to remember that the ballot initiative to legalize marijuana in the state is what put a lot of the Democrat/anti-gun legislators in power in the first place. I do wonder if a similar situation for repealing the magazine ban will do likewise to remove those legislators and overturn this bad law.

I seriously doubt the crowd that voted for legal pot is going to keep coming back to the polls now that they have what they were after.
 
CoRoMo said:
Don't we have like 3 or 4 different ballot initiatives gathering signatures, all pertaining to repeal one or more of the gun control laws recently passed?

Surely all 3 or 4 won't appear on the ballot, right?

I'm not too particularly fond of any of the ones that I've seen because they all seem to be a little distasteful for the average non-gun owning voter and I'm afraid that more of them will be at the voting booth in 2014 than those of us who are rabidly pro-2A and mad about the new laws. I might just be too diplomatic or PC, I don't know, but I like the simple and generic one that says something along the lines of...

No law shall stand/be passed in the state of Colorado that exceeds the current federal gun restrictions.

Doing it this way doesn't even give the people the power to enact gun control by way of popular vote/ballot initiative. It also, not only repeals the recently signed laws but repeals a good many more. I might also declare Colorado a 'constitutional carry' state.

I like the simple, palatable nature of such a ballot question. It doesn't talk about magazines, background checks, nothing... but it covers them all.
Click to expand...

I wholeheartedly agree.
 
Old Fuff said:
I would worry that if for whatever reason the Government in Washington passed some serious gun control legislation, that would open the door for the Colorado legislature to walk through. It's not good to offer them an opportunity.
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Open the door for what? The Colorado state legislature doesn't have to approve federal law for it to be in effect.
 
CoRoMo said:
... I like the simple and generic one that says something along the lines of...

No law shall stand/be passed in the state of Colorado that exceeds the current federal gun restrictions.

... I might also declare Colorado a 'constitutional carry' state.

...
Click to expand...

I meant to say that It might then nullify Colorado's statutes regarding concealed carry, not that I might do that. :)
 
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