Colorado’s Democratic-controlled House on Sunday passed a bill that would ban the sale and transfer of semiautomatic firearms, a major step for the legislation after roughly the same bill was swiftly killed by Democrats last year.
The bill, which passed on a 35-27 vote, is now on its way to the Democratic-led state Senate. If it passes there, it could bring Colorado in line with 10 other states — including California, New York and Illinois — that have prohibitions on semiautomatic guns.
But even in a state plagued by some of the nation’s worst mass shootings, such legislation faces headwinds.
Colorado’s political history is purple, shifting blue only recently. The bill’s chances of success in the state Senate are lower than they were in the House, where Democrats have a 46-19 majority and a bigger far-left flank. Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, has indicated his wariness over such a ban.
Do you not think cops are more likely to kill black people if there’s a gun ban regardless whether they are armed?
Yes, I’m well aware of how it looks. They are trying to use public massacres to ignite a civil war. Of course it’s horrible.
And yet we do almost nothing to prosecute their talking heads who incite those same shootings and the billionaires who fund their rallies. Because hate speech is still somehow free speech. We need to clean up the loopholes in the first amendment before addressing the second.
Trump is campaigning to become the next fuhrer, not president, yet you dingalings are bound and determined to make sure that we’re disarmed in advance. How stupid is that?
That’s some wicked grammar there, but… no? Why would the cops kill less black people if specific firearms are banned?
What?
Also, I feel Americans need to see this, and maybe consider that all these children dying isn’t necessary for their hobby or ‘self defense’ claims:
USA has eight times the rate (as in percentage, not total_ of firearms deaths as Canada, which has more strict firearms rules. Canada has one-hundred times the rate of firearms deaths of the UK, which has more strict firearms rules.
That means the USA has 800 times the rare of firearms deaths as the UK. So when this mysterious ‘civil war’ happens, how many children will have died so that you can have that semi-auto AR-15 to fight off the drones of the American military, or the armoured vehicles of your cops?
Instead of pretending One Man With A Gun is going to do something, maybe try voting locally. Maybe try de-arming your cops?
I used to agree with this train of thought, why be armed when the government has tanks?
But the realities of the past several years have shown us that an armed rebellion can be significantly more powerful. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at Myanmar today where the rebel groups are literally 3D printing carbines. A guerilla group with small arms can put serious pressure on a modern military. Will lots of them die? Probably. Will they “win”? Probably not, but they could easily wear down the enemy with attrition. When you need to move a couple dozen men with rifles it’s an entirely different game than coordinating 12 tanks and 500 men, you can employ completely different tactics. Especially on your home turf that you know inside and out.
Is an armed rebellion happening anytime soon? I sure hope not. But the threat that an armed populace can at the least put some serious hurt on a military/government is a deterrent to tyranny. Just the possibility of it is a huge deterrent, compared to authoritarian countries where citizens aren’t armed and get run over by tanks.
I’m not saying gun violence isn’t a huge problem, but saying armed citizenry is zero deterrent is just factually untrue.
Couple things, but mostly: 1. How free are people in Iraq and Afghanistan, exactly? 2. Rebel groups are illegally printing carbines. The legality of it is meaningless. They aren’t taking on the US military on it’s own soil.
If you guys are saying that making death-by-gun the most common form of death for children in the USA, even above cars is worth it for some maybe-one-day-we’ll-be-a-militia-group seems like the most sad and specious logic I’ve ever heard. I’m a parent and theoretically fighting some imaginary war (which we’ve been hearing about for decade after decade…) takes a definite backseat to my kids making it through school un-shot-at.
And virtually every armed rebellion that worked happened in a nation where firearms were heavily restricted, so the laws are meaningless. Hell you could only own a smoothbore shotgun at most in the soviet union, and last I checked a whole bunch of those countries had armed rebellions.
I’m not arguing against gun bans because I love guns. I’m arguing against them because humanity has a serious problem with fascism. I’m pointing out that fascists are heavily armed. The cops are almost entirely fascist sympathizers. They selectively enforce gun bans across racial and ideological lines, just like the Nazis did in Germany. They don’t take guns away from Nazis. Instead, they use those laws to gun down minorities.
Oh hey, who’s that? Why, is that a psychopathic fascist running for president? I wonder what would happen if he won again, and minorities and leftists were selectively disarmed and his neo-nazi followers weren’t? But how could that ever happen? Cops are there to protect us from bad guys, right?
Yeah. Violence is generally not the answer. But when it is, it’s the only answer.
Compare your image above with something extremely similar happening systematically, over and over and over as a populace is rounded up and shipped off to camps.
It sucks. Both situations suck. But disarming yourself isn’t the solution.
Be armed. Be reasonable, and prefer to de-escalate. But also be willing to fight.
Yes. Cops have always used gun bans as an excuse to kill more black people, regardless whether or not they are armed.
Yes. They are trying to use school shootings to ignite a civil war. It’s in their manifestos they leave behind. They say so on their forums. The same talking heads who formented the insurrection are same ones who encourage incels to commit public massacres, then deny all culpability immediately after. They even claim the shootings never happened.
You think this is a push, from the NRA amongst others, to get people to… ban specific firearms? How exactly does banning semi-auto firearms prevent your Totally-Going-To-Work-Later uprising?
[Because congratulations, your efforts to keep your firearms only cost the lives of 4,357 children (ages 1-19 years old) in the U.S. in 2020.
By comparison, motor-vehicle deaths accounted for 4,112 deaths in that age range.](https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/03/29/guns-leading-deaths-children-us/)
It’s not just firearms here, although firearms do admittedly give some fucked up people a voice.
It’s the cultural tendency to fuck people up that is the larger issue.