Updated at 12:35 a.m.: After 12-plus hours of testimony and debate, Colorado Democrats advanced a bill early Wednesday morning to ban the sale or purchase of so-called assault weapons.
The measure, HB24-1292, cleared its initial hurdle in the House Judiciary Committee and now heads directly to the House floor, after a late amendment removed financial penalties, which would’ve routed the bill to another committee, and replaced them with a petty offense charge. The measure still needs two floor votes to pass the House before restarting the process in the Senate.
The measure’s definition of “assault weapons” includes semi-automatic rifles and pistols with fixed large-capacity magazines or that have the ability to accept detachable magazines, along with other types of high-powered firearms and various capabilities. The bill does not ban the possession of the weapons.
“We know about the ever-present threat of mass shootings, public shootings, with few to zero injured survivors, but fatalities in the double digits … we know that those continue unchecked but for courageous, data-driven policy change,” said Rep. Elisabeth Epps, who’s sponsoring the bill with Rep. Tim Hernández. Both are Denver Democrats.
The bill passed the committee on a 7-3 party-line vote. A similar bill, which was also sponsored by Epps, died in House Judiciary last year.
Two of the Democrats who voted no 11 months ago are no longer on the committee, and their replacements both voted in support. Rep. Marc Snyder, a Colorado Springs Democrat who also voted no last year, was excused Tuesday night.
Updated at 5:40 p.m.: Opponents of the weapons bill have formed a bulk of public commenters as the hearing has worn on. The committee room is still full, more than six hours after the hearing began and with several more hours still to go.
It’s possible the committee won’t vote until after midnight.
Though the vast majority of testimony from both supporters and opponents has passed without incident, one woman was ejected from the room after she cursed at Hernández.
Critics of the bill argued that the bill infringes upon their rights of self-defense and that it would decimate the gun industry in Colorado.
Rod Brandenburg, who owns Grandpa’s Pawn and Gun in Longmont, told lawmakers that he’s “been in business over 75 years, we have sold over 100,000 guns that have never been involved in a mass shooting, and you want to penalize us.”
Supporters of the bill are still present, recognizable by the red shirts they wear to show support for gun reform. Grant Cramer, a sophomore at East High School in Denver, described the shootings that rocked his school last year. Two administrators were shot by a student who later died by suicide a year ago, and another student was fatally shot outside the school weeks before that.
The shootings sparked community outcries and prompted students to repeatedly march to the Capitol and demand responses from legislators.
“How many more school shootings do I have to endure before we can come together as a state and say that citizens don’t need AR-15s to hunt and for self-defense?” Cramer said.
Updated at 1:17 p.m.: As the first public commenters began to testify for and against the “assault” weapons bill late Tuesday morning, common themes quickly emerged.
For supporters of the bill, which would ban the sale and purchase of certain semi-automatic weapons, the measure is a response to the mass shootings that have become routine in Colorado and in America. High-casualty mass shootings — including several in Colorado — have been carried out using the sort of weapons that would be curtailed by the bill.
“I have grown up as part of ‘Generation Lockdown,’ a generation that has only ever known the consequences and ensuing fear of gun violence in schools,” Rhiannon Danborn, a senior at Arvada West High School, told lawmakers. She described first hearing about mass shootings when she was 6 years old, after the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting, in which 20 first-graders and six adults were shot to death.
Opponents, meanwhile, countered that the bill was so broad that it would cover a number of handguns and other firearms. They accused lawmakers of infringing on residents’ ability to own firearms and defend themselves, and representatives of pro-gun rights groups pledged to sue the state should the ban ever become law.
Several compared firearms to trucks, given the potential danger from both.
“You cannot legislate away evil, period,” said Amanda Hardin, a firearms instructor. “But you can defend yourself against evil. I want to be clear, this is not an assault weapons ban bill. The language in this bill makes this a gun ban.”
Several other opponents argued that the issue in America wasn’t high-powered firearms or gun-ownership, but untreated mental illness. That’s a frequent talking point from gun-rights advocates. Democratic legislators repeatedly pressed them to explain why America has so many more mass shootings than comparable nations with stronger gun restrictions.
Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat, asked one opponent if he thought Americans are just more “monstrous” than their peers overseas.
“There was a study released last year — the United States has had 57 times as many school shootings as every other G7 country combined,” Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat, told one panel of gun-rights advocates. The Group of 7 countries are the U.S., Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy, France and the United Kingdom. “My question, for anybody, is why? Why is that?”
Original story: Colorado legislators kicked off a marathon committee hearing Tuesday about whether to ban the sale and transfer of a range of semi-automatic firearms here, a bill that’s likely to pass its first vote and has drawn hundreds of supporters and opponents who’ve signed up to testify.
The bill, HB24-1292, would prohibit the sale, purchase, transfer, import and manufacture of so-called “assault weapons” in Colorado.
The bill is sponsored by Denver Democratic Reps. Hernández and Epps. Last year, a similar bill died in the House Judiciary Committee on the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.
The same committee will vote on the measure Tuesday — though, given that more than 500 people have signed up to testify, the vote may not come until early Wednesday morning.
But two of last year’s no votes are off of the committee, replaced by progressive legislators who are co-sponsoring the bill. That gives the bill a strong chance of advancing out of committee.
Epps and Hernández are expected to make slight changes to the bill related to the transfer and transportation of the weapons. If passed Tuesday, the measure would next go to the House Finance Committee before moving to the House floor.
Hernández, a 27-year-old teacher and freshman lawmaker, began his opening comments to the House Judiciary Committee by describing his life running parallel to the steady drumbeat of mass shootings in the United States, from Columbine in 1999 to Aurora and Sandy Hook in 2012 and the STEM School Highlands Ranch shooting in 2019.
“I’ve been living with this my entire life, from 2009 to 2022,” Hernández said. “Nine out of 10 of the mass shooting incidents with the most casualties involve the use of at least one assault weapon. This has been happening my entire life. And, to be frank with you, I’m not waiting anymore.”
Dozens of pro-gun activists protested outside of the Capitol on Tuesday morning. The committee room in the Capitol was at capacity, with an overflow room set up elsewhere in the building. An audio livestream of the committee is available here.
Republicans are uniformly opposed to the bill, and pro-gun reform groups have pledged to file a lawsuit to contest the measure should it become law.
Opening questions from the committee included Republicans questioning the weapons’ prevalence in gun violence and Democrats countering by listing the mass shootings perpetrated by them because of their unique lethality.
The bill is one of several gun reform measures backed by legislative Democrats this year. Another measure, to limit where guns can be carried in Colorado, is set to be heard in committee Wednesday.
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Correction: Added March 20, 2024: Due to reporter error, this story has been updated to correct Rod Brandenburg's quote.
