Colorado’s Democratic-controlled House on Sunday passed a bill that would ban the sale, import, and transfer of virtually all semiautomatic firearms, a major comeback 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 ten other states—including California, New York, and Illinois—that have prohibitions on semiautomatic guns.
The legislation is bound to face headwinds in the Senate, where the Democrats have a slimmer majority.
Though the bill specifically prohibits the sale and transfer of all types of AK and AR rifles—including the infamous AR-15—the definition it gives to “assault weapons” is of a sweeping nature, applying to all rifles and pistols with threaded barrels and detachable magazines, and those with a fixed large-capacity magazine.
Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, has already indicated his wariness over such a ban.
Last year, a similar bill promptly died in committee, with some Democratic lawmakers citing concerns over the expansive nature of the ban and promises made to their constituents to avoid government overreach affecting most gun owners’ rights.
Democrats passed four less sweeping gun control bills last year. Those included raising the age for buying any gun from 18 to 21, establishing a three-day waiting period between the purchase and receipt of a gun, strengthening the state’s red flag law, and rolling back some legal protections for the firearms industry, exposing it to lawsuits from the victims of gun violence.
Those laws were signed months after a shooting at a Colorado Springs nightclub last year where five people were killed and 25 were injured. The new bill comes as the 25th anniversary of the infamous 1999 Columbine High School shooting looms, where 15 people died—including the two gunmen who committed suicide on the spot. Other mass shootings in Colorado include the 2012 shooting at an Aurora movie theater and another in 2021 at a supermarket in Boulder.
“This is the state where the modern era of the mass shooting began with Columbine,” Democratic Rep. Javier Mabrey said as he urged his fellow lawmakers to approve the ban on semiautomatic weapons.
Republicans decried the legislation as an encroachment on the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. They reasoned that mental illness and people who do not value life are the core issues that need to be addressed rather than guns, arguing that people with ill intent can still procure other weapons, such as knives, to harm others.
Democrats responded that semiautomatic weapons can cause much more damage in a short period of time.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
