Colorado Democrats introduced two new gun bills Friday afternoon that they say represent the next steps in what will be a years-long attempt at stemming gun violence here.
Rep. Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat who’s sponsoring one of the new bills, said, “Each year, whatever it might be, whatever it might look like, we will be bringing (gun) legislation to the point to where it’s just as common as a health care bill, just as common as an environmental bill, where it’s not some big thing, where it’s standard, normal. We’re going to be dealing with this.”
She’s in her second year at the legislature, and her fellow sophomore Democrat, Rep. Tom Sullivan of Aurora, echoed her sentiment.
“I don’t have a problem saying that the legislators here prior to me getting here didn’t have the courage to stand up to run something like this,” said Sullivan, whose son, Alex, was murdered in the Aurora theater massacre. “I will stand up in front of this and the message that I put out, the story that I tell, is empowering colleagues … to stand alongside of me.”
The first of the new bills would require secure storage of firearms, and would in fact penalize people who do not comply. In homes and businesses, under this bill, gun owners would be required to either store their weapons in safe boxes or place locking devices on them. The bill offers some flexibility in terms of what the storage looks like, as long as it’s secure enough to be accessible only with the use of a key, combination code or biometric data such as fingerprints. Failing to comply with these rules would be a class 2 misdemeanor under the proposed bill.
Additionally, the safe storage bill — sponsored in the House by Duran and Rep. Kyle Mullica, D-Northglenn — would require gun dealers to provide locking devices to buyers, and proposes to punish noncompliant gun dealers with fines up to $500.
The second bill is also starting in the House and will be sponsored there by Sullivan and Rep. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, D-Boulder County. The bill seeks to require that anyone who becomes aware that a gun they own has been either lost or stolen to report that loss or theft to law enforcement within 48 hours. It, too, would create new criminal punishments for violators: Failure to comply would be treated as a petty offense, punishable by a small fine, in the first event. But second and subsequent offenses would be treated as class 3 misdemeanors.
A strong majority of Coloradans supports legal repercussions for people who don’t comply with either of the proposed new bills, a recent report from the political consulting firm Strategies 360 found. Both bills had 71% support, according to an early January survey of 600 registered voters, with a 4% margin of error. The survey found six in 10 Republicans supported each of the bills.
These numbers will almost certainly not be reflected at the Capitol. Republican leaders in both chambers of the legislature have vowed to fight the two proposals.
They object to the idea of creating new criminal penalties for gun owners, and House Minority Leader Patrick Neville, R-Castle Rock, said he’s also troubled by provisions in both bills that require officials to enter relevant offenses into databases.
“Now we have an effective gun registration,” he said. “A lot of people don’t want the government knowing that they own firearms.”
Neville voiced concern weeks ago that requiring “safe storage” of guns could mean owners need an extra few seconds to unlock their guns, which, he said, would be significant in the case of a home invasion. The Democratic sponsors wrote in an exception that states anyone who has their gun within reach — for instance, in a nightstand next to where the owner is sleeping — does not need to secure the gun. Neville said that’s not good enough.
“You might have folks that store firearms in a certain room … now they walk into a different room and they’re criminals,” he said, adding that he’s not confident the law is enforceable.
Republicans made the same argument last year when Democrats passed the red flag bill, which allows law enforcement, with permission from a judge, to temporarily confiscate firearms from people deemed to be dangerous to themselves or others. That was the first gun bill passed in Colorado since 2013. And Republicans are sounding the alarm about the Democratic promises to keep legislation on this front coming.
“What the voters need to know is that majorities matter, and we need to take control of one of these chambers so we can be the backstop against some of these anti-Second Amendment bills,” said Assistant Minority Leader John Cooke, R-Weld County. “They need to know that this is going to continue to happen until we take control of one of the chambers.”
The bill sponsors, who rallied Friday with about 400 members of the gun safety advocacy group Moms Demand Action, say they’re heartened by the strong public support for their bills and will not cave to pressure from Colorado Republicans or the gun lobby groups that back them.
“We are in a crisis mode. We have high teen suicide. We have to address it,” Duran said. “We can’t just brush it under the rug anymore.”
