I am writing to you because I am concerned about several of the current 'gun legislation' bills that have passed the house and are now in the senate.
To cover my concerns:
HB 1226 - Campus Carry Ban: It is unproven that 'gun free zones' stop violent offenders, to the contrary most mass shootings occur in such areas. Why should college students be unable to defend themselves just because they are in college? They can do it in just about any other location legally. It seems that part of 'protecting our kids' is allowing them to protect themselves.
HB 1229 - Background checks for private sales: While it is understandable that people don't want others selling guns to 'bad' people, I'm pretty sure this legislation is not going to actually do any good. It actually makes it harder for citizens to afford guns, thus acts as a sort of 'poll tax' keeping them from practicing their 2nd amendment rights. Private citizens must go to a FFL dealer in order to conduct a private sale, which the dealer get's to charge a fee, seems like a government give away to dealers, allowing them to make more money. As I'm sure you are aware, there are many times more murders committed with knives and blunt objects than there are committed by firearms, so singling out the private sale of firearms while not requiring special licensing, registration and background checks for other inert objects that cause even more injury and death does not really make sense, it's easy to see it as an agenda driven item, rather than actually caring about cutting back crime. In addition, this legislation appears to make colorado go beyond our normal CBI background check, and use the federal system. I see no need in using the federal system, it is known to be slow and ineffective, thus potentially putting an undue restriction on law abiding citizens in terms of waiting times.
HB 1224 - High Capacity Magazine Ban: Why 10 rounds? What is this arbitrary number? First off, many guns are designed with magazines that hold more than 10 rounds... they are not 'high capacity' they are 'standard' capacity. I realize the driving force behind this legislation is the desire to 'get rid of' 30 round AR-15 magazines, but as hopefully you have heard, that wouldn't reduce much of anything. Of the numerous murders that happen with guns in this nation (still far less than with knives and bats), a small fraction occur with rifles, and of that, a fraction of a fraction occur with what the media terms 'assault weapons' which is what this legislation is aimed at. Think about it, even if you could remove ever 'assault weapon' from American society, you might have stopped a dozen or so deaths out of thousands. You'd get better results if you banned knives.
Yes, it is said by those that support such legislation that this would cause less deaths because psychopaths that go on shooting sprees would have 'less bullets'. I'll draw your attention to the VA tech shooter that didn't have an AR-15 or 30 round magazines, he had many handguns and many more loaded magazines and quickly and effectively changed magazines and continued to shoot people. The time it takes to swap out 10 round magazines is negligible, and will not decrease deaths by mass shooters. From what I understand the Aurora shooter had a 100 round magazine, and as anybody familiar with firearms knows, big magazines have more of a tendency to jam, and the Aurora shooters did jam. Let's take a trip of the path of reality and pretend he was a law abiding psychopath and there was a 10 round max magazine limit already in place.... considering the split seconds it takes to drop a mag and load another, and that everyone in the theater was in shock, he probably would have killed even more people as a 10 round mag is far less likely to jam than what he used.
There are several issues with the other bills being proposed as well, but I'm hoping by now you kinda get the point of this letter. I want you to protect the Second Amendment rights of me and every other citizen of Colorado and vote NO on all of these bills which will not stop mass shootings or reduce crime. I welcome a real conversation about mental health and how to spot and stop those that might commit such crimes in the future, but these bills are the wrong path to take.
My friends, family, neighbors and co-workers are all paying attention to what is going on in Denver with these proposed bills, and we will work very hard to support those that support our Second Amendment rights and work to unseat those that do not, in the next election cycle.
