Colorado County Calls on Governor to Veto Gun Ban Bill

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is almost certain to sign SB 3 into law after legislators amended the semi-auto ban to include changes suggested by his office, but the grassroots opposition to the gun ban and permit-to-purchase bill remains intense across the state. This week commissioners in Pueblo County adopted a resolution calling on Polis to veto the measure, citing multiple reasons why the legislation is a step in the wrong direction. 

Republican Board Chairman Zach Swearingen, who drafted the ordinance, argues that SB 3 could put many gun stores out of business by curtailing the sale of almost every gas-operated semi-automatic long gun that can accept a detachable magazine unless the purchaser undergoes additional state-mandated training and obtains a firearms safety course eligibility card from their local sheriff. 

“There’s a lot of unconstitutional pieces to (SB-3),” Swearingen said. “It is already hurting mom-and-pop gun shops, I’ve already heard several have moved out of state. By our Constitution, (gun ownership) is a right. You are forcing people to take a test for a right. And that’s a slippery slope.”

Swearingen stated he believed the bill, if signed by Polis, would likely be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, but it would likely take four to five years to get there, at which point the damage would already be done.

I certainly hope it won’t take the Supreme Court five years or more to take up a challenge to existing “assault weapon” bans, but SCOTUS has been sitting on the Snope case out of Maryland since mid-December, so it’s anyone’s guess when or if the justices will grant cert to a lawsuit dealing with bans on commonly owned semi-automatic long guns. 

While Swearingen’s resolution garnered the support of fellow Republican commissioner Paula McPheeters, the sole Democrat on the county commission voted against it, even as he claimed to be opposed to SB 3 as well. 

“It’s crazy to me to say that the founding fathers wrote the Second Amendment of the Constitution with the knowledge that we’d have these horrific killing machines at the disposal of the public,” Lucero said. “If we want to revise this resolution to say it’s a significant cost at a time when the state doesn’t have money, if there’s implementation hurdles, there’s going to be legal challenges, all of that is true.”

“I’m not fully on board with the idea that exemptions don’t apply to law enforcement officials or honorably discharged veterans,” Lucero continued. “I don’t think they should have to go through these training courses. And to be abundantly clear, this bill doesn’t say you can’t own these firearms, it says you have to take a course to do so.”

The Founders wanted we the people to serve as the ultimate check on the formation of a tyrannical government. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 46:

Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.

And who would those arms belong to? The people, not the State. 

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.

Madison wasn’t sure that the right to own arms by itself would be enough to overcome a tyrannical regime, but couple an armed populace with the ability for them to harness the power of state and local governments and Madison believed that a tyrannical government could not only be overthrown, but fail to be established in the first place. 

The Founders lived in a time of profound technological change. Could George Washington have envisioned using a submarine to conduct military maneuvers when was fighting in the French and Indian War? Probably not, but just a couple of decades later David Bushnell used The Turtle (however unsuccessfully) to attack a British ship at anchor off New York City. Frankly, even if Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson couldn’t have imagined a modern day semi-automatic rifle, if we could travel back into the past and inform them of all of the weaponry available to governments I’d say they’d be demanding more than the ability to own an AR-15 to check the power of the State. 

Even if we brush aside the collective security aspect of the Second Amendment, the fact remains that as firearms have developed over the decades, there was no widespread movement to ban the sale and possession of multi-shot revolvers, lever-action repeating rifles, or detachable magazines until the late 1980s. I’d argue that the Founding Fathers could more easily imagine an AR-15 than they could envision the modern day gun control movement, and they’d be horrified at the bill that’s currently before Jared Polis… not to mention the gun bans already in place in a handful of states like California, New York, Maryland, and New Jersey.