Colorado has been the site of some high-profile mass murders. One thinks of the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999, which involved 15 deaths plus the two shooters. The massacre at a movie theatre in 2012 in Aurora, which involved 12 deaths. The massacre at a supermarket in Boulder, where 10 people died. Five people died at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs in 2023. Curtailing access to guns may be one way to limit future killers.
Colorado would ban the sale, transfer and importation of so-called assault weaponsunder a bill introduced Tuesday in the state House.
The measure, HB24-1292, is similar to legislation that a House committee killed last spring in its first hearing, but this year’s version may have better chances. The new bill would define assault weapons as including semi-automatic rifles and pistols with fixed large-capacity magazines or the ability to accept detachable magazines, along with several other types of high-powered firearms.
It would not ban the possession of the weapons but would prohibit the “manufacturing, importing, purchasing, selling, offering to sell or transferring” of them, with exemptions for police and the military. It also would prohibit the possession of rapid-fire trigger activators, Seth Klamann reports.
