April 27, 2023 03:36 PM UTC

It's Red vs. Red As "Ghost Gun" Ban Sails Through

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• by: Colorado Pols

This afternoon, the Colorado Senate is debating Senate Bill 23-279, a late-introduced bill banning the possession and manufacture of “ghost guns.” This bill was introduced in direct response to a shooting at Denver’s East High School earlier this year that reportedly involved such a weapon. In keeping with the general trend this legislative session, though mostly in the ungovernable House GOP micro-minority, Senate Republicans are putting up a spirited fight–one of the last chances for Republicans to slow the wheels of progress before the session ends next month.

What’s interesting about this particular conflict is that Colorado Senate Republicans are standing in opposition to numerous Republican prosecutors and mayors, from Mayor Mike Coffman in Aurora to the failed 2022 GOP candidate for attorney general, John Kellner. Marianne Goodland of the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog reported last week when the legislation passed its first committee hearing:

The seventh major gun bill of the 2023 session encountered one of the shorter paths to its first committee victory, given its support from Democratic and Republican mayors, as well as from district attorneys and law enforcement officials…

[Colorado Springs Mayor] Suthers, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock all called for a crackdown on ghost guns in a letter to the Colorado Springs Gazette in January, calling for state laws to deter the use of these untraceable weapons, in part because people who possess those weapons are able to circumvent background checks, or could obtain them even when under a restraining order or red flag protection order…

And juveniles are getting them, too, said [GOP DA John] Kellner, who pleaded with lawmakers to give them the tools to go after the people who sell these guns and make them so prevalent in communities. [Pols emphasis]

Of all the gun safety bills passed by Democratic lawmakers in the last decade in Colorado, outlawing the production of “ghost guns” should be one of the least controversial. It’s a common-sense update to account for easily-available 3D printers to create the specific component of a modern firearm that legally counts as the weapon. With that relatively small piece of plastic in hand, a working firearm can be completed by purchasing the “spare parts” necessary with no background check required. In short, to oppose this legislation is to support subverting all of our existing laws regulating gun access.

That’s why Republican elected officials in cities plagued by gun violence and Republican prosecutors, even those with an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment, support what should be no-brainer bipartisan legislation to crack down on ghost guns. Polling on the issue shows public support for banning ghost guns consistently over 70%.

The moral of the story? There’s the merely out-of-touch, and then there’s Senate GOP-level out-of-touch.