Colorado Will Allow Cities To Pass Their Own Gun Laws
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Colorado’s cities can pass their own gun laws under a new bill, coming months after a mass shooting took 10 lives.
On March 22 this year, a shooter opened fire in a Boulder supermarket, killing 10 people including an off-duty police officer. It was just one of nearly 300 mass shootings since the start of 2021.
Now, Colorado Governor Jared Polis has signed three new bills in response to the tragedy, with one allowing cities to legislate on guns themselves.
The new bill, SB21-256, sets out new rules for local control of gun regulations, reversing a ban which prohibited ‘a local government from enacting an ordinance, regulation, or other law that prohibits the sale, purchase, or possession of a firearm,’ the Denver Post reports.
Cities will not be able to have more lenient laws, only permitted to make them stricter, making gun control ‘a matter of state and local concern.’
Just 10 days prior to the shooting, a Boulder County District Court judge blocked the city’s ban on the possession of assault weapons and 10-round magazines, as it didn’t comply with law. The AR-556 used in the massacre would have fallen under the ban. While the shooter is said to have purchased it in another city, he still wouldn’t have been allowed to carry it.
Polis signed two other bills: HB21-1298, which means people can no longer purchase guns without a completed background check, in addition to new restrictions on those who are permitted to buy weapons; and HB21-1299, which will see the provision of $3 million for the state’s first Office of Gun Violence Prevention, aimed to raise awareness of and reduce gun violence.
‘Recent tragedies around Colorado and the country demand quick and decisive action. Together these measures will make our communities safer, keep firearms out of the hands of those who would do harm to themselves or others, and get those in crisis help as soon as possible,’ Polis said in a statement.
Colorado Senate Majority Leader Stephen Fenberg said the legislation will help create a ‘framework that, over time, will result in saving lives… there’s something that I think a mass shooting does to the psyche of a community collectively, even if you weren’t individually involved or impacted and it really kind of disrupts the way you move through your daily life through your world,’ as per CBS News.
‘Although the topic of these three bills are about pain, and loss and trauma, I’m here today grounded in hope. I’m hopeful because step by step, bill by bill, we here in Colorado are creating safer communities,’ he added.
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