According to a recent press release from Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the department is proposing to build a “a state-of-the-art shooting and education complex in the Grand Valley”. Perhaps the good folks at the CPW missed the absolute chaos of the Bloomberg-inspired gun grab nearly this entire session, resulting in some of the strictest gun laws in the country. According to the press release:
“Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials add that the complex will be able to support large-scale national and international shooting competitions, providing a significant economic boost to local communities.”
The same questions that haunted Colorado’s Democratic legislators pushing this legislation have to be asked here: would new magazine limits prevent such competitions from coming to Colorado? If the recent cancellation of the Members of the International Defensive Pistol Association regional championship is a harbinger, the answer is yes. From the Associated Press‘s coverage of the canceled event:
“impending limitations on magazine capacity would be the biggest problem. A new state law bans ownership of any magazine with more than 15 rounds manufactured or purchased after July 1.
‘If somebody were planning to come to the event, and for some reason needed to get new magazines for their (guns) and they bought them on July 2 and hopped on an airplane and came here, they would technically be in violation as soon as they touched the ground,’ [Walt] Proulx [event coordinator] said.”
This is the second shooting competition to suffer the pistol association’s fate. The 2013 Ruger Rimfire Challenge World Championships recently also announced plans to relocate to another state.
While the costs of this particular shooting range have not yet been solidified, the CPW’s proposal alluded to two projects with vastly different price tags. The first was a $12 million earmark for a shooting range near the Denver Metro area, which was ultimately scrapped due to local objections. The second was the Cheyenne Mountain Shooting Complex near Colorado Springs to which the CPW contributed nearly one million dollars.
Offering gun safety and education classes, as the CPW has stated it would like to do, is an honorable goal, but the question remains – why should Coloradans pay more to develop a shooting range when they’re already paying on a variety of levels due to the over the top gun legislation from Colorado’s Democrats?