(COLORADO SPRINGS) – State House lawmakers voted today to raise the age for all firearm purchases to 21 years old. This is one of three gun bills that are now one step closer to becoming law in Colorado.
Colorado State Lawmakers debated for four days, over those three gun bills. These marathon sessions began on Friday, lasted through the weekend, and spilled into Monday for five more hours.
The final vote on Monday, March 27, was for Senate Bill 169, which would raise the age to 21 for all firearm purchases.
“You’re segregating one specific group within our country and you’re saying that they should not and then what follows is a constitutional right… I can’t, on a constitutional level, support this bill,” said Rep. Scott Bottoms (R-Colorado Springs)
El Paso County Republicans couldn’t get behind any of the bills. The other two passed largely on party lines in a rare Sunday session.
The first bill, Senate Bill 170, would broaden red flag laws, allowing more people such as licensed medical and mental health care providers, licensed educators, and district attorneys, to petition for judges to take guns away from people who are considered a risk.
Colorado Springs Democrats said this law could have prevented the Club Q shooting.
“Here are some things we know about that assailant. In June of 2021, [they] forced an evacuation of [their] entire neighborhood with a bomb threat… The assailant also expressed white supremacist and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments, ran a neo-nazi website, and posted content like mass shooting training videos… Somebody needed to intervene, and if the range of individuals available to make that call to initiate that intervention… Something could have been done,” said Rep. Stephanie Vigil (D-Colorado Springs).
After testifying at the capitol earlier in March in opposition to expanding the state’s red flag laws, El Paso County Sheriff Joe Roybal expressed in a statement, once again, that he finds this legislation problematic.
“SB 170, the expanded Red Flag and Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) law, allows non-law enforcement professionals to use stale, likely expired information against citizens and violates their 2nd Amendment, Constitutional rights… While law enforcement must rely on current, verifiable, and reliable information to obtain a search warrant, this legislation allows for information used to petition for an ERPO to be upwards of six months old,” said Sheriff Roybal, adding that he will do everything in his power to vet the ERPOs that do come across his desk.
The second bill, Senate Bill 168, would allow victims of gun violence to sue firearm dealers and manufacturers.
“We don’t sue car dealerships when somebody gets drunk and mows down a whole bunch of kids… We take the actions of the person and we prosecute those actions. Putting this responsibility on the gun dealers is completely unreasonable,” said Isaac Chase, co-founder of Guns For Everyone.
Members of the community, opposing this bill, say that local gun dealers are just like any other small business.
“They are regular working class people… and one lawsuit will put a gun shop out of business,” said Chase.
Chase is also a firearms trainer, who offers free classes in Colorado Springs and Pueblo. He says that these new laws create confusion, and should be more accessible to the average citizen.
“We’re having people who are probably only going to hear these laws one time and we’re expecting them to comprehend and remember the intricacies of these laws from one classroom experience, and that’s unreasonable in a lot of cases,” said Chase.
These bills will go to the desk of Governor Jared Polis for his approval before becoming law. A decision is expected within the next month.
