HB21-1106, “Safe Storage Of Firearms,” will go through a second reading tomorrow, Wednesday, March 3rd at 9 am in the Colorado House Chambers.
The legislation seeks to make gun ownership more expensive, one of the major tenants of the Biden Administration, via “safety” mechanisms. It’s always about “safety” with progressive legislation.
A simple google search shows that gun safes are two-hundred dollars and upward. If people have more than one gun, larger safes are 1000 dollars and upward. People who cannot afford gun “safety” are not apt to give up their firearms; instead, this legislation will achieve the same as Yadira Coreveo’s anti-marijuana bill that seeks to regulate a medical industry that could just as easily return to back alleyways, tax-free, and be dominated by sketchy drug dealers rather than medical professionals and licensed workers.
According to Taylor Rhodes with Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, “HB21-1106 is a covert addition to Colorado’s “Red Flag” law,” an unconstitutional attempt by the state of Colorado to seize firearms from people whom the state determines to be “mentally unfit” to own firearms.
“Behind closed doors,” Rhodes goes on to explain, “the House Bill Sponsors indicated that they believed this wouldn’t be a primary criminal charge. Instead, they would use this law to prosecute those who had been “Red Flagged” (or another civil matter) IF they didn’t have their firearms locked away properly.”
The legislation, like the Biden Gun Control legislation, seeks to facilitate legislation that targets firearms manufacturers, sellers, and owners, for a breadth of frivolous reasons. It doesn’t take a legal scholar, nor does it take an economist, to argue that thousands of frivolous lawsuits targeted at the above groups make gun manufacturing, selling, buying, and owning a firearm infinitely more expensive. The collective legislation could very well be industry-killing, and only the most privileged Americans would own firearms legally.
As Rally for Our Rights proclaims, Colorado gun legislation is not only making firearm ownership more expensive; it’s also making legal ownership complicated and vulnerable to serious criminal charges. “An accompanying piece of legislation has also been introduced: . We can already see how they intend to use these laws together. If you leave your gun in your car while you go into a gun-free area such as your child’s school, and it’s stolen, as soon as you report it you will be asked why it wasn’t being “safely stored”, and criminal charges will ensue. This will only mean fewer people will report their guns stolen out of fear they will be punished. Punitive laws don’t work. This bill will be .”
Rhodes and RMGO rally against frivolous lawsuits and frivolous legislation. As he explains, “outside of the stated secondary charges, there is absolutely no way to enforce this anti-gun scheme. Thus, it’s a pointless bill.”
Importantly, as Rhodes points out, owning firearms for personal and family safety, via this legislation, is a foregone conclusion. “We, as gun owners, own firearms for a reason, and for many of us, that reason is to defend ourselves, our families, and our property. This bill strips away that right as it forces those with firearms to lock our guns away, even amid a deadly home invasion.”
“Several legal scholars” according to Rhodes, “noted that this bill is downright unconstitutional, and it violates District of Columbia v Heller.”
In that case, the US Supreme Court ruled that barriers to quick access to firearms that are used for personal safety are unconstitutional because they risk people’s personal, God-given right to protect themselves with firearms. Justice Antonin Scalia delivered the lengthy opinion, which reads amongst a dozen other important points, that:
” The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny, the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute—would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home is disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional. Because Heller conceded at oral argument that the D. C. licensing law is permissible if it is not enforced arbitrarily and capriciously, the Court assumes that a license will satisfy his prayer for relief and does not address the licensing requirement. Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising Second Amendment rights, the District must permit Heller to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home. Pp. 56–64.”
By adding these safety barriers to firearm ownership, the owner is rendered unable to quickly protect himself in case of robbery, assault, or attack.
Adding barriers to a Constitutional (and by the Constitution, God-given) right does not make unconstitutionality moot; it nevertheless infringes on that Constitutional, God-given right. Infringement on the Second Amendment, or any other, is unconstitutional. How much more of this infringement, not just Coloradoans, but all Americans will allow remains to be seen.
