In a near-midnight vote, a Colorado Senate committee late Tuesday gave initial approval to a bill that would ban the sale or purchase of semiautomatic firearms that accept detachable magazines.
The measure would cover a large swath of guns that are colloquially known as assault weapons. Senate Bill 3 passed the Senate’s State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee on a party-line, 3-2 vote after eight hours of testimony in a packed room in the state Capitol.
The measure now heads to the full Senate, where its passage is virtually assured. Eighteen votes are needed to clear the 35-seat chamber, and 18 Democrats — not including a newly appointed senator who voted for the bill Tuesday night — have already signed on as co-sponsors.
From there, the bill will head to the House, where it has similar levels of support.
The bill’s sponsors, Democratic Sens. Tom Sullivan and Julie Gonzales, argued that it was the next step in enforcing Colorado’s 11-year-old ban on high-capacity magazines.
Sullivan, whose son, Alex, was killed in the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting, said the magazine ban has been ignored, thus requiring lawmakers to pursue a ban on the sale or transfer of firearms that accept the components. The measure would also ban rapid-fire trigger activators and bump stocks, which increase the fire rate of weapons.
Marking a novel approach to limiting gun sales, SB-3 would not cover common shotguns, revolvers or pistols, unless they are gas-operated. It also would not make it illegal to possess semiautomatic weapons that accept detachable magazines.
The measure would essentially require gun manufacturers to modify semiautomatic rifles to have fixed magazines that must be loaded, round by round, from the top of the weapon, rather than through magazines that can be easily swapped out when bullets run out.
“This is an enforcement of the high-capacity magazine ban,” Sullivan said before the vote. “Something that we should have been working on since 2013, but we didn’t. And it took 11 years for us to get back on it and do something about it. That’s what we’re doing today. This is the next step forward. And then we’ll see where we go from here.”
For hours Tuesday, supporters and opponents took turns defending and railing against the proposal.
East High School students recalled the shootings and lockdowns on their campus in recent years, while local and national advocates for gun control groups defended the bill’s legality and workability.
The specter of Colorado’s — and America’s — grim and steady drumbeat of mass shootings was also ever-present Tuesday: Two supporters said they were alumni of Virginia Tech, the site of a 2007 shooting that left 32 people dead. Some supporters testified about shopping at the Boulder King Soopers where 10 people were killed by a shooter in 2021.
Jane Dougherty, whose sister was killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, testified about receiving her sister’s cleaned clothing in a box.
“We sanitize it because we don’t want to see it,” said Dougherty, who has testified in favor of past Colorado bills that were attempts at more overt bans on so-called assault weapons. “But we have to see it. We have to see what high-capacity magazines will do to your family members.”
The bill was opposed by Republicans, gun-rights advocacy groups and gun store owners. Firearms dealers warned that the ban would push them out of business.
JD Murphree of Triple J Armory said it would “devastate” gun stores. Gun- rights groups pledged to sue — a threat they have pursued, to mixed results, on recent gun-control bills.
Sen. Rod Pelton, a Cheyenne Wells Republican, said the measure was unconstitutional and violated the Second Amendment. Several opponents also accused the legislature of essentially seeking to ban all semiautomatic rifles.
“A gun ban by another name is still a gun ban,” Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams told the committee.
Sullivan denied that SB-3 was an assault weapons ban, and he said he didn’t support such a policy. Indeed, he said he’d essentially killed attempts by fellow Democrats over the past two years to pass a more explicit ban.
Governor’s position unclear
A Centennial Democrat, Sullivan is largely seen as the legislature’s de facto point-person on gun legislation. His backing of this latest iteration — coupled with more overt support in both chambers — means the bill is likely to pass and reach Gov. Jared Polis’ desk.
Polis’ position on the measure is unclear; a spokeswoman did not immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday morning.
A potential snag comes from the bill’s estimated cost: The Colorado Bureau of Investigation projects that the bill would cost $4.6 million to implement — a hefty price tag in a session when the legislature faces a $700 million budget hole.
But a nonpartisan fiscal analyst working for the legislature essentially rejected that estimate and said there would be no cost to the state. Sullivan also criticized the CBI’s estimates, and he accused the agency of “fluffing” the numbers, potentially on behalf of a leery Polis, to make it easier to set the bill aside.
High financial projections are often a quiet kiss of death for legislation, and lawmakers have long griped that the estimates can be artificially inflated to sideline bills. Sullivan noted that the CBI’s estimate included the need for several $90,000 microscopes and a remodeling of one of the agency’s labs.
Shortly before the committee vote, Sullivan said he was undaunted by the opposition seated behind him, adding that he wished more firearms dealers and gunowners had sought out proactive conversations before.
“When I got myself here, I made sure that we’re going to have these kinds of conversations every single year while I am here — while people in my district vote for me and bring me here, while I beat back recalls against me for what I think is the right thing to do,” Sullivan said. “So we’ll keep having these conversations, and I welcome these conversations. Because we’re going down the right path with this.”
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