If That’s The Argument for Colorado’s Permit-To-Purchase Law, It’s a Stupid One

Permit-to-purchase laws strike me as dumb on so many levels. For one thing, criminals are never going to get a permit first. They don’t stop straw buys from happening, as we’ve seen in every permit-to-purchase state. They don’t do anything except create burdens for law-abiding gun owners…and violate their right to keep and bear arms.

It’s even more ridiculous when you mandate training prior to getting said permit.

But when it’s about crime, I can at least see the so-called logic at work. Not about the training, obviously—though a case could be made that such training might reduce accidents—but the idea of a permit to buy a gun might make it harder on the criminals, even if just a bit.

I don’t agree, but I can see the argument.

Colorado has gone down that particular path, and apparently, an argument in defense of these permits and training requirements is the dumbest humanly possible.

A new Colorado law requiring people who purchase firearms to undergo a state-approved firearms safety course is going into effect August 1, with new restrictions supporters say are designed to prevent mass shootings. Gun advocates say it will prevent law-abiding residents from getting weapons to protect themselves.

Senate Bill 25-003, titled “Semiautomatic Firearms & Rapid-Fire Devices,” sponsored by state Senator Tom Sullivan, D-Centennial, was signed into law by Governor Jared Polis in April of last year.

Sullivan was inspired to draft this bill following the murder of his son Alex during the Aurora theater mass shooting in 2012. His son was at the movie to celebrate his 27th birthday.

Now, the reporter did something I don’t see enough of—looking at you, USA Today-and they talked to someone who actually knows gun rights from a legal standpoint. They talked to our boy, Kostas Moros, and he brought up some important points.

Kostas Moros, the director of Legal Research and Education at the Second Amendment Foundation, said he is concerned about delays to issue carry permits now that safety courses are required and as well as the costs associated with the permits.

“I think the point of a law is to try and dissuade people from exercising this right,” Moros said. “This is some sort of Jim-Crow inspired tactic. These are the kind of restrictions they put in front of [voters] to try and discourage people from voting.”

He claimed that people should be able to take the two-day Extended Firearms Safety course in one day if they wanted, since it is only 12 hours of instruction.

The cost for the 12-hour course in Colorado runs about $250 according to the U.S. Firearms Training Academy site. An additional $152 is required for the actual permit, not subject to local and state fees. The Second Amendment Foundation is currently engaged in litigation against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over their near-$2,000 permit fees.

So yeah, they’re just trying to price people out of owning the most common long gun in private hands in the country by taking a gun that costs, on the low end, between $500 and $750—and adding another $400 or so dollars onto it. In other words, it’ll be a trivial expense for the wealthy, and an insurmountable burden for many in the working class.

Which means a lot of people won’t do it for that reason alone, which is the point.

Then Moros drops this banger:

Moros said that Democrats argue the Save Act that would require ID for voting is “unconstitutional and would disenfranchise voters.”

“But where is that energy for the Second Amendment?” he asked. “They are putting much more burden on this Constitutional right … and not noticing the hypocrisy. I wish more people would notice that.”

A perfectly valid point. Why is it such a burden to get an ID to vote—especially when you need it for about a thousand other things in your life—but this is supposed to be a nothing when it comes to your gun rights?

But Moros didn’t touch on the thing that bugged me the most about the framing here, and that’s how this is supposed to stop mass shootings. Likely, it’s because they didn’t ask him about it, but it still bugged me.

See, that’s right there in that first quoted paragraph, but anyone who makes that argument is a complete and total moron. I’m sorry, while I’m trying to soften my criticisms of individuals, I can’t here. That is the most boneheaded suggestion I’ve ever heard, and in this line of work, that’s saying something.

Mass killers won’t get AR-15s if they have to sit through a class and get a permit? Really? First, a lot of mass killers either steal guns from family members or have clean enough records where it doesn’t matter. They’re often methodical in their preparation. They’re not worried about the expense of buying a gun because they’re going to put it on a credit card and won’t likely be around when the bill comes due.

They’ll sit in a class if they have to, and nothing in that class is going to dissuade them from whatever they have planned.

The issue is not now, nor has it ever been about access to guns. Guns aren’t required to visit carnage on a target. To think otherwise is to completely ignore anything and everything about such attacks that’s not screened by Everytown or Giffords first.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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