Well, it's about to begin.
Colorado Dems held a press conference today to unveil their gun owner control package. (and of course they had the usual props - victims and kin of victims of murderers who used firearms). Among the highlights of their proposals are:
"Colorado Democrats said they will introduce bills that would hold makers and sellers of assault-style weapons legally liable for any harm gunmen inflicted with them..."
A novel strategy, but not a surprising one. What form that liability will take (actionable in tort, insurance requirement, etc...) will be interesting, especially as, in the article, Dave Kopel points out that the Lawful Commerce in Arms Act prohibits such suits against manufacturers and licensed firearms dealers.
"Aside from the call for liability for makers and sellers of assault-style weapons, Democrats called for a limited-size ammunition magazines, fees for gun background checks, stricter training for concealed weapons permits and other prohibitions."
The dems didn't release any of the specific bills, so all I have to go on are these quotes from the local bird cage liner (did you catch the singular-plural conflict when they mentioned mag capacity limits?). No idea yet if the magic number will be a 7 or a 10 for factory standard mags. I doubt it'll come to it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the "stricter training" looked a little something like this:
The "other prohibitions" could be anything at this point. I think what they're doing is emulating (to some degree) the national strategy, which is to lay off the "assault weapons" ban directly (politically it's like shooting a picatinny rail on a .460 Weatherby Magnum sans gloves) but see what else they can get away with. The tax on background checks might get some approval in polls (Colorado voters, not the legislature, closed our "gun show loophole" after all), and stricter standards will be framed in a way that implies the current standards to pay for a permission slip to exercise a Right are somehow lax.
I'll see what pops up over the next few days. And head on over to the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners page as they might find something out before I'm able to.
Posted by Publicola at February 5, 2013 12:18 PM | TrackBack