You’d think Rep. Dianne DeGette and her fellow Colorado congresscritter Jason Crow would have done some investigating on just how effective their own state’s ban on “high capacity” magazines has been before attempting to force the U.S. House to vote on a similar ban, but I guess it’s too much to ask for them to do some homework.
If they’d bothered to take a look, they would have learned that ten years after the ban took effect, there’s been little enforcement of the state law, while it’s effects on violent crime have been non-existent. In 2022 the state had the eighth highest violent crime rate in the nation. Colorado’s violent crime rate has gone up almost every year since lawmakers enacted the magazine ban in 2013, and now DeGette and Crow want to impose the same useless and unconstitutional gun control law on gun owners in all 50 states.
DeGette, a Denver Democrat, alongside House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force Chair Mike Thompson, a California Democrat, filed a so-called discharge petition to force a vote on the Keep Americans Safe Act.
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The petition requires 218 signatures to force a vote on the floor, and with 213 Democrats in the House, at least five Republicans would need to sign. DeGette said she thinks some Republicans in the House represent districts impacted by mass shootings and may be under pressure from their constituents to ban high-capacity magazines.
“Once we get as many Democratic signatures as we can, we’re really going to start putting pressure on Republicans who are in districts where their constituents demand action,” DeGette told Newsline.
You can demand action on violent crime, but that doesn’t mean we should be adopting laws that are both ineffective and an affront to our right to armed self-defense. More gun control laws does not equate to less crime, and Colorado is a prime example of the damage that comes from embracing that misguided ideology.
U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Centennial Democrat, joined DeGette and members of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol after DeGette filed the petition and applauded Colorado leadership for its gun safety measures, particularly banning high-capacity magazines.
“In Colorado, we are fortunate to have a state legislature focused on gun reform when Congress fails to make significant change due to Republican stonewalling over and over again,” Crow said.
Fortunate? The state legislature has been myopically focused on restricting the rights of lawful gun owners for a decade now, and this is the poisonous fruit of their labor. In 2012, the year before the state adopted “universal” background checks and a magazine ban, Colorado ranked thirtieth out of fifty states when it came to violent crime. A decade later Colorado was eighth and had the fourth-highest rate of overall crime in the country.
I don’t know why Crow would consider that a success or believe Coloradans have benefitted from the legislature’s continued restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms, but unless you’re pro-violent crime those numbers are nothing to celebrate, and the policies that have placed the state in that precarious position are certainly not worth emulating. Given the small minority that Republicans have in the House, this is an issue where gun owners should be communicating with their own representatives to demand that they reject DeGette’s discharge petition and avoid replicating Colorado’s mistake on a national level.
