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SB13-196: Nanny Morse Defines “Assault Weapon” More Broadly than Feinstein

by | 4:09 pm, March 2, 2013 | 2 Comments

Dianne Feinstein contents herself with merely naming names and ticking off a bunch of irrelevant features when she decides what guns law-abiding citizens will be permitted to keep. Colorado Senate President and resident drama queen and self-righteous per-diem collector John Morse just outlaws entire categories:

 13-21-1203. Definitions. AS USED IN THIS PART 12, UNLESS THE CONTEXT OTHERWISE REQUIRES:

(1) “ASSAULT WEAPON” MEANS A FIREARM THAT IS NOT A:

(a) HANDGUN;

(b) BOLT-ACTION RIFLE; OR

(c) SHOTGUN.

(2) “BOLT-ACTION RIFLE” MEANS A FIREARM THAT IS:

(a) DESIGNED OR REDESIGNED, MADE OR REMADE, OR INTENDED TO BE FIRED FROM THE SHOULDER;

(b) DESIGNED OR REDESIGNED, MADE OR REMADE, AND INTENDED TO USE THE ENERGY OF THE EXPLOSION IN A FIXED METALLIC CARTRIDGE TO FIRE ONLY A SINGLE PROJECTILE THROUGH A RIFLE BORE FOR EACH PULL OF THE TRIGGER; AND

(c) LOADED BY A MANUALLY OPERATED BOLT, PUMP, LEVER, OR SLIDE ACTION.

Hey, why not? Since you can’t actually offer a meaningful definition of “assault weapon”, why not just lump in everything? Because of course, everything that is magazine or tube fed just has to be one of them crazy-dangerous “military-style assault weapons…[which] were originally intended for combat and were specifically designed to kill large numbers of people in a short period of time”.

Including that little 10-round 22LR your dad gave you as a kid for small-game hunting. It also means black-powder rifles (being neither shotguns nor bolt-action rifles) are now “assault weapons”.

You just have to wonder what these anti-gun zealots are thinking, if they are thinking at all. Okay, I understand that as hoplophobes they have an irrational and visceral and infantile loathing for guns and the people who own them (apart from their bodygards of course). And I understand that Newtown was the kind of thing they’ve been hungering for and praying for for years, a golden opportunity they could spin into “America’s Dunblane” and use as an emotion-driven pretext to ram through draconian new gun controls. But you’d think that they’d have spent a little more time in all those years devising devilishly iron-clad bills which might avoid the shortcomings which made a mockery of their previous temporary victory. Instead, they were too busy grandstanding and waving bloody shirts and demonizing the NRA and such to do more than a slapdash job, as we see here. (Assuming it was even Morse and company, and not out-of-state billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s well-funded anti-gun operation, that wrote these bills.)

Such incompetence in one’s opponents would be a relief, if we had enough responsible and reasonable Democrats in the Democrat-owned Colorado Legislature to take our side and defeat awful, unnecessary bills like Morse’s, or a Supreme Court in Colorado that could be trusted to void such a bad law should it make it out of the Dome. It remains to be seen whether we have the former (I don’t have my hopes up, but public pressure might change a few votes), but as for the latter we could only hope to get the Court to overturn any of these laws by tricking them into thinking they somehow favor Republicans or good government.

Better to stop these bills from becoming law in the first place. Contact your state Representative and Senator, and show up if you can to Monday’s public hearings. The NRA naturally has all the Colorado legislature contact information gathered in one convenient place.

And just because I haven’t used this image in a long time…

A fellow worthy of infinite jest, a man of most crapulent fancies

Category: Colorado, Colorado Politics, Colorado Supreme Court, Democrats, Gun Rights, Politics
Tags: > >

Comments

  1.   Andrew
      March 2nd, 2013 @ 10:14 pm

    For shotguns, only pump-action are allowed. Semi-auto and break action shotguns (the kind VP Joe Biden wants you to shoot out your back door) aren’t covered. It’s the silly “and” in the proposed statute.

    (6) “SHOTGUN” MEANS A FIREARM WITH ONE OR MORE BARRELS
    25 THAT IS:
    26 (a) DESIGNED OR REDESIGNED, MADE OR REMADE, OR INTENDED
    27 TO BE FIRED FROM THE SHOULDER;
    -4- SB13-1961 (b) DESIGNED OR REDESIGNED, MADE OR REMADE, AND INTENDED
    2 TO USE THE ENERGY OF THE EXPLOSION IN A FIXED SHOTGUN SHELL TO
    3 FIRE THROUGH A SMOOTH BORE EITHER A NUMBER OF BALL SHOT OR A
    4 SINGLE PROJECTILE FOR EACH PULL OF THE TRIGGER; AND
    5 (c) LOADED MANUALLY BY PUMP ACTION.

  2.   T.L. James
      March 2nd, 2013 @ 10:38 pm

    This is unreal. Morse used to be a cop. Hard to believe that with umpteen years of police experience he knows so little about the guns he wants to ban.

    Ironic that he appears to think only cops should have access to firearms. If so, he certainly does nothing to make such a prospect reassuring. I guess it’s typical of legislators all around – beyond their feelings-based agendas and power-seeking opportunism they know nothing about the things they want to mandate, regulate, or eliminate via legislation, and seek public input and expert testimony and conduct “listening tours” and the like to make it seem like they are getting educated on the issues and citizen desires when they ignore it all and do what they planned to do from the beginning.

    A massive, spontaneous public rally that surrounds the capitol building on Monday, chanting and hollering loud enough to be heard in the hearing chambers, might actually give them pause. 90 minutes of unheard Potemkin testimony against the bills will merely fig-leaf the for-votes that were in truth decided weeks ago before the bills were even submitted and the charade of “consideration” was launched. Democrats of Morse’s ilk do not care what the people actually want, what will actually work, or what is constitutional. They want what they want, the plebeians be damned.

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