Among the decades old semi-jokes told around Colorado was labeling Boulder “the People’s Republic,” for its Democrat/socialist/communist (D/s/c) tendencies. The joke became less funny as those tendencies became holy writ and spread to Denver, the state’s largest population center. Most recently, the Denver area has become a hotbed of anti-Constitution resistance as local authorities have protected violent, well armed, illegal immigrant gangsters and other illegals.

Graphic: X Screenshot

Now, the People’s Republic of Colorado has passed an anti-liberty/gun law that couldn’t be a clearer violation of the Second Amendment. The bill passed the state Senate on a 19-15 party line vote and went to the House where D/s/cs hold a 43-22 majority. The House quickly passed it and Governor Jared Polis is expected to sign it. The bill bans many of the most usual, common and popular American arms:

The bill defines a “specified semiautomatic firearm” as a semiautomatic rifle or semiautomatic shotgun with a detachable magazine or a gas-operated semiautomatic handgun with a detachable magazine. The bill prohibits knowingly manufacturing, distributing, transferring, selling, or purchasing a specified semiautomatic firearm; except that a person may transfer a specified semiautomatic firearm to an heir, an individual residing in another state, or a federally licensed firearm dealer.

The language is purposely vague. All semiautomatic handguns are arguably “gas-operated,” allowing Colorado to restrict Coloradans to revolvers. The only currently manufactured semiautomatic handgun that might escape is KelTec’s ingenious new PR57 which has no detachable magazine and loads its twenty 5.7X28mm rounds from stripper clips. Apparently, Colorado D/s/c legislators aren’t aware of that one, but they'll surely include it later.

Graphic: KelTec PR57, KelTec

Banning semiautomatic shotguns with detachable magazines makes little sense. The same magazines work perfectly well with pump action shotguns, which cycle nearly as quickly as semiautos. Detachable magazine capacity and traditional, under barrel, tubular magazine capacity is essentially identical. Most gunmakers offer detachable magazines of around five rounds—shotgun shells are big. Larger capacity magazines are available but are huge, unwieldy and for most, prohibitively heavy.

The bill’s real intent, besides inconveniencing and punishing law-abiding gun owners, is outlawing non-existent “assault weapons” like the ubiquitous AR-15 family, the most popular modern sporting rifles in America. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, there are more than 30 million such rifles in American’s hands.

Considering Americans have been buying more than a million guns a month for more than 66 consecutive months—15 million in 2024 alone--the numbers are surely much higher. Even with Donald Trump in the White House it’s unlikely that purchase rate will slow. Mistrust of government runs deep.

The bill’s language would also ban virtually every popular semiautomatic rifle (there are a few exceptions) of every caliber, including the ubiquitous Ruger 10-22, which has a standard, detachable 10-round, 22LR caliber, magazine. Ruger’s equally popular line of .22 pistols would also be banned.

Also banned would be every common semiautomatic handgun of every caliber carried for self-defense and every other legitimate purpose. That too is D/s/c intent, as is doing nothing to disarm violent, illegal immigrant gangsters.

Supreme Court decisions, most recently Bruen (2022) affirmed the Second Amendment secures an unalienable, individual right to keep and bear arms, not only in one’s home but in public. The Supreme Court also made clear weapons in common and usual use are constitutionally protected, though it did not specify makes and models, which is a sort of opening for Colorado’s kind of abuse. Bruen’s text, which makes clear the Second Amendment is not a second-class right forcing citizens to prove some special need to government to exercise it, is here. 

Clearly, the bill is unconstitutional, illegal. Colorado’s D/s/c legislators know this, and know they’ll have to spend untold millions of taxpayer dollars to defend a law that will inevitably be struck down. They also know it will take years for the case to reach the Supreme Court, which may or may not grant cert, waiting for another or more similar cases to become “ripe” before considering their issues. This could leave Colorado’s law on the books for at least two years, giving law enforcement officers not burdened by consciences or fidelity to the Constitution an opening to harass and arrest the law-abiding. It will also give equally unscrupulous judges the ability to fine and imprison gun owners for exercising their Second Amendment rights.

That’ll show those gun nuts.

Colorado is like other largely red states with a few isolated D/s/c population centers surrounded by vast seas of red residents hated by the D/s/c self-imagined elite. In many ways, that’s what this is all about. D/s/cs are eternally compelled to force Deplorables—in thought, word, deed and possessions--to do what only they know is good for them.

Deplorables, particularly western Deplorables, know better.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.