Who needs industry in Colorado?
UPDATE: The MagBan repeal passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 3-2 party line vote. According to Twitter, applause erupted upon passage. Coloradans shouldn’t get too excited just yet – the Democratic leadership in the House has hinted that the bill will go nowhere in the House.
Today, SB 15-175, an essentially one sentence bill to repeal the unenforceable high capacity magazine ban that Governor Hickenlooper signed into law in 2013, faces a Republican majority Senate Judiciary Committee. (Can’t make it to the Capitol to testify? Testify here.) This is just another 2015 Republican effort to undo the wildly unpopular gun control legislation that was railroaded through a Democrat controlled State Senate and House of Representatives two years ago.
That Republicans are undoing some of the damage from 2013 may not be a surprise, but here’s a little inside baseball on just how unbelievably pointless that MagBan was.
According to the fiscal note for SB 15-175, since the disastrous magazine ban took effect in 2013, there have been a grand total of nine cases filed under the four new crimes (one felony and four misdemeanors). Of these nine cases, just one conviction was attained, and the person convicted was neither fined, nor sent to jail on account of his “criminal” conduct.
Just to be clear, that one conviction was an $85 million conviction. Here’s what was reported in 2013:
“…the pending legislation to ban standard capacity magazines over 15 rounds, HB1224, would actually cost Colorado even more [than sequestration] — at least $85 million that Magpul projects it will contribute to Colorado’s economy in 2013. And that doesn’t even include the salaries of its 200 employees.”
As a recap, HB 13-1224 made it illegal to transfer or sell magazines with greater than a 15 round capacity, and also required any magazine produced in the state after July 1, 2013 to have a stamp indicating the magazine was created after July 1, 2013, a pointless exercise. The law also banned magazines that could be easily converted to hold more than 15 rounds, another poorly thought out aspect of the law, as the rudimentary construction and very few parts of any gun magazine makes them by nature easy to reconfigure.
Sen. John Cooke, a retired sheriff, teamed up with Sen. Chris Holbert to introduce this legislation. In spite of some Democrats’ profession support for the repeal, the bill may not make it through the Democrat controlled State House of Representatives. But, why should Democrats do the will of the people when they can do the will of their donors?