Legislators in Colorado have stopped this year's attempt to ban semi-automatic weapons in the state.
The ban had passed the Colorado House of Representatives before Senators decided not to move the bill forward in their chamber on Tuesday.
The National Rifle Association's Institute For Legislative Action celebrated the move via the following statement:
“On Tuesday, May 7th, The Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs voted to indefinitely postpone House Bill 1292, the semi-automatic ban, officially taking the bill off the table for this legislative session. This is a critical victory for all law-abiding gun owners in Colorado!
HB24-1292's broad definition of “assault weapon” would have banned all semi-automatic rifles including America's most common rifle, the AR-15, along with countless other rifles, pistols, and shotguns that Coloradans use for hunting, target shooting, and self-defense. The bill also aimed to ban .50 BMG rifles, despite the fact that these rifles are essentially never used in crime. Even worse, the ban extended to common firearm parts and many innocuous components in the definition of “assault weapon” and “rapid-fire trigger activator” (FRT/forced reset trigger).”
As noted by Fox News, one of the prime opponents of the bill was Democratic state Senator Tom Sullivan, who lost a son in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting. Sullivan noted that the ban would do little to actually curb gun violence, stating ” “The narrative is all wrong … That's what they want you to believe, that it's assault weapons and schools. It's not. … It's suicides and it's domestic violence.”
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