March 02, 2013 09:52 AM UTC

Once Again: No One Is Trying To Ban Your Shotgun

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• by: Colorado Pols

SUNDAY UPDATE: Very little mainstream media pickup to report for Sen. Greg Brophy's transparent and silly attempt to confound the debate over House Bill 13-1224. A smattering of right wing properties like Breitbart News, Michelle Malkin's Twitchy, and the right-leaning Washington Times have posted low-information blurbs alleging that there is someone–anyone–in the state of Colorado who wants to "ban shotguns." It appears that most other outlets correctly deduced how stupid that is, and what the true motivations for this inane little freakout really were.

Since most of our readers are familiar with Sen. Brophy's trademark shamelessness, let us say we feel kind of bad for CBS4 reporter Shaun Boyd for getting used like this. Then again, she probably should have paid more attention to the nonsense she was being breathlessly pitched.
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The gun debate takes another turn for the stupid, as CBS4's Shaun Boyd obligatively reports:

A popular hunting shotgun could be banned under one of the bills moving through the state Capitol.

A pump or semi-automatic shotgun is the gun most hunters in Colorado use. It’s a gun state Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, says could be banned under a bill that’s already passed the House and Gov. John Hickenlooper says he’ll sign.

“They’re coming after the standard shotgun,” Brophy told CBS4 Political Specialist Shaun Boyd.

So, here's the deal: Sen. Greg Brophy demonstrated on television news how you can unscrew the tube magazine of a standard pump-action (or semiautomatic) shotgun and add an extender, which would raise its capacity above House Bill 13-1224's prescribed eight-round maximum for shotguns. Note that the maximum capacity extension in this case is limited by the length of the shotgun barrel–most extenders we've found online raise the capacity of a tube-magazine shotgun from the usual five to either eight or ten rounds.

In short, what you've got here is, at most, a situation where a minor amendment to the bill is called for–either exempting tube-magazine shotguns mindful of their inherent limits, or adding language banning the tube magazine extensions Brophy is talking about. Nothing about this situation, in the very most charitable interpretation an unintended consequence to be amended and helpfully pointed out by Sen. Brophy, adds up to validate the accusation "they're coming after the standard shotgun."

But as we've told you over and over again, folks, valid accusations are not what this is about.

That's the headline at the top of the Drudge Report right now, one of the largest nationwide conservative "news" aggregators. The whole purpose of Sen. Brophy's rant about "banning shotguns" to Shaun Boyd, willfully ignorant of the legislative process he is part of, was to produce this bogus headline, which will now be disseminated to all corners of the online conservative infosphere. By Monday, most if not all of the pro-gun witnesses testifying against the bill will believe this nonsense without question. As you know, no one has any intention of banning shotguns in the Colorado legislature–or even AR-15s for that matter. Sen. Brophy knows it. Sen. Brophy knows, assuming there is even a problem here, exactly how to fix it. Democrats have already said they would accommodate him.

Just as with the over-the-top falsehood that background checks would "prohibit the private transfer of firearms," or any of the wilder conspiracy theories lurking beneath just about every contemporary debate on gun safety legislation, the purpose here is not to have a rational debate.

Sen. Brophy and the opponents of these bills are doing everything they can to make this debate irrational.