Lawmakers in the Colorado House of Representatives voted early on Thursday morning to shelf a bill that prohibits people from buying and selling “assault weapons” in the state.
The bill, HB23-1230, was brought by Denver Democratic Rep. Elisabeth Epps.
The bill defined assault weapons as semi-automatic rifles that can be made to accept a detachable magazine and has any number of additional features, including a pistol grip, a collapsible stock, flash suppressor, threaded barrel, functional grenade launcher or a barrel shroud “allowing the bearer to hold the firearm with the non-trigger hand without being burned.”
The bill also bans semiautomatic pistols that can accept detachable magazines and has any of the aforementioned features or that exceed a weight of 50 ounces when unloaded or a buffer tube or other part that protrudes behind the pistol grip. Shotguns with revolving cylinders or a semiautomatic shotgun that has a pistol grip, collapsable stock or the ability to accept a detachable magazine are also included in the list of banned weapons, along with .50 caliber rifles.
The Democrat-controlled Colorado House Judiciary Committee voted 8–5 on Thursday morning to indefinitely postpone the bill.
Four Democratic lawmakers on the committee—Lindsey Daugherty, Bob Marshall, Said Sharbini, and Marc Snyder—joined the four Republicans on the committee in the vote to shelf Epps’s bill. The committee members came to that vote at approximately 12:54 a.m. on Thursday morning after 14 hours of debate.
The debate over the gun control bill drew hundreds of Coloradans to the Capitol on Wednesday. According to a statement by the Colorado House Republicans, more than 500 Coloradans signed up to voice their opinions on the legislation. The Colorado Republicans claimed the ratio of people who spoke in opposition to the bill was about 6:1 against those who favored the legislation.
“Colorado spoke up today, loud and clear, and told this legislative body to leave their constitutional rights alone,” Republican House Minority Leader Mike Lynch said Wednesday.
Democratic lawmakers in Colorado have passed other gun control measures during this legislative session, including expanding red-flag laws—which allow a judge to temporarily remove someone’s firearm if they pose a risk to themselves or others—along with raising the gun purchase age to 21 and imposing a three-day waiting period on gun purchases in the state. Colorado lawmakers also passed a bill allowing shooting victims to sue the gun industry. While they supported those other gun control measures, some Democrats said Epps’s bill went further than what they’re comfortable with.
Democratic Rep. Marc Snyder, who voted against the bill, said he’d told constituents he’d work to reduce gun violence. “But the other thing I told them was that I had no interest in taking guns away from law-abiding citizens. And the, bill I believe, does.”
Epps challenged her fellow Democrats to move forward on the gun control bill in her opening remarks on Wednesday.
“I’ve long said that Democrats weren’t serious about a statewide ban on assault weapons. So if we fail, I was right. I want to be wrong. I want to be wrong. I’d like to be wrong today,” Epps said at the start of the hearing, Colorado Public Radio reported.
While the lawmakers in Colorado stalled on Epps’s legislation, a similar ban on various semiautomatic weapons passed through the Democrat-controlled Washington state legislature on Wednesday. Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee is expected to sign the bill into law.
Epps Offers Softened Bill
In a final effort to get a bill passed the committee, Epps made amendments that would have watered the bill down to merely ban the sale of rapid-fire trigger activators and bump stocks, which enable a person to shoot faster. Those proposed changes also failed to garner enough support from Democrats.
Supporters of Epps’s original legislation reportedly expressed some apprehension at the concessions she offered.
Jane Dougherty, whose sister Mary Sherlach was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, told Colorado Public Radio “I was shocked, a little disappointed” after Epps offered a pared-down version of her bill.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.