The Democrats are putting the pedal down on the civilian disarmament bills in the Colorado Legislature.  They have calendared all four of the bills introduced on Thursday afternoon for their first committee hearings on Tuesday the 12th.  

These hearings will be “upon adjournment” which means when the House gets done with their work on the floor, they will adjourn to the committee meetings. The House convenes at 9am, which means that they typically don’t adjourn until at least 10am and sometimes later, but on occasion they move fast and adjourn more quickly.  That means be prepared for hearings to start at any time after 9am.  Depending upon how much testimony, the hearings could last all day.  If you plan on testifying, there will be a clipboard to sign, usually by the door to the committee room.  Usually the Chair of the Committee will call all of the supporters or opponents of the bill to testify together, depending upon the wishes of the bill sponsor.  Usually the bill sponsor will ask that “their” witnesses supporting the bill speak first so that they don’t have to wait around for hours.  Testimony is then normally taken in the order in which witnesses signed up.  

BE PREPARED FOR SCHEDULING MONKEY BUSINESS.  Colorado law only requires 1 day of public notice to schedule a bill for hearing in committee and the Democrats control the calendar.  If they think they can get advantage by rescheduling the bill, they will do so.  They can lay the bill over to a later date at the start of the committee meeting, meaning you just wasted a morning.  Or they can release a new calendar in the afternoon and have the meeting the next morning.  We need to be patient and flexible.

Remember, all visitors into the CO State Capitol are run through a mag detector, so leave your hardware in your car.  Speaking of which, almost all meter parking for a two block radius of the Capitol is bagged for permit parking, so be prepared to park in a lot and pay $6-10 cash and then walk three or four blocks.

On Tuesday the 12th, the House Judiciary Committee will be meeting in the Old Supreme Court Chambers on the 2nd floor upon adjournment and hear:

HB13-1224 Prohibiting “Large Capacity” Magazines
HB13-1229 Universal Background Checks

On Wednesday the 13th the Education Committee will be meeting upon adjournment and hear:

HB13-1226 No Concealed Carry at Colleges

On Wednesday the 13th at 1:30pm in the Old Supreme Court Chambers on the 2nd floor the Finance Committee will hear:

HB13-1228 Payment for Background Checks on Firearms Transfers


SOME GENERAL TESTIMONY SUGGESTIONS
Don’t dress like a hobo.  We aren’t the nuts that they would make us out to be, don’t look like one.  First impressions matter.
Be exceedingly polite.  Suffer their abuse.  The Chair can and will have you escorted out of the hearing if you are rude.  The more polite we are, the harder we will be to demonize.
Make your testimony personal.  How will the legislation affect YOU or YOUR FAMILY.
Read the bills, and know the details of the legislation.  Limit your testimony to the bill being considered at the time.
Listen to the testimony before you, and particularly listen to the supporters of the legislation if you can.
Try not to repeat previous testimony…unless you can make it personal.
Be brief.  Make your point, thank the Chair and the Committee, and move on.

CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS AND GOVERNOR HICKENLOOPER
If you haven’t already done so, this is mission critical.
Call them, fax them, email them, snail mail.  Send it by Carrier Pigeon if you have to.
We already know the Democrats are freaking out at the feedback they are getting, this is why they want to move these bills as fast as possible to give us less time to react.  Keep your foot on their necks.
If you don’t know who your legislator is, go to https://www.sos.state.co.us/voter-classic/secuRegVoterIntro.do  This will tell you which districts you are in.
If you do plan to go to the Capitol and testify, please plan on taking some time to speak with your legislators personally, as well as stopping by the Governor’s office on the 1st floor.  BE POLITE.


Feel free to copy this information, along with my earlier post describing the bills, into an email and send them to all of your like minded friends in Colorado.  There are several Democrats, primarily that represent rural areas of CO, that are not supportive of these bills.  It will very likely come down to one vote either way whether these bills pass one or both houses.  It is an uphill fight, be we CAN win.  We just need to be willing to put the sweat equity where are values are.

I will be going. Heading up from Pueblo, I'll take anyone with me if they want to hitch a ride.
 

Work has me heading out of town on Wednesday but I will be there for Tuesday.


-Guys it is no coincidence that we got a short window on this and that it is occurring in the middle of the week. They do not want to see anyone there that opposes this legislation. They want to point to those legislators that may be on the fence on this and say that regardless of what they might be hearing, that when push comes to shove the Gun Rights guys are ok with the bills that they are looking to pass. Lets show them that they are wrong!

From what I hear the sheriffs contacted lawmakers in Denver saying "We need a cool down period of at least a year before looking at it again. Denver told them "NO! Action now!"



This is what we are up against guys.

Ill try to be there. How do we find out where to go, protocols. Etc?

When would these bills be voted on?  Tried looking for dates but didn't see any.. or my eyes are bad.  



Good luck fellas.  Don't become NY.

They know that they are loosing momentum with each passing day. A month from now would be too long to get done what they want to do let alone a year.

Uh...read the first post.

First post is a bit sparse on specifics. Where is the committee room for example?

Delete

I'm off Tuesday, but would really prefer to carpool down there as my ride is kinda crappy. Anyone in the Thorton/Brighton/Nortglenn area available to give me a ride if I can make it?

I wish I was closer.  I have a friend that would absolutely take them to task on the Constitution and anything gun related.

The state legislature web site is a POS. Broken links to committee members, etc. Here are lists I compiled this morning when composing emails to these committees.

Updated House Judiciary email list:

[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]


Education Committee

[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]


Finance Committee

[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]

I'm gonna try like hell to make it down there on Tuesday. There's no way I can make it on Wednesday, which blows because I am a current student at a CO university.

Will be calling and emailing today!

I doubt that I'll be able to make it.  I did make the steps last Friday.  

If someone is going to testify, then here are my radical reactionary requests on what to say and ask:
1. Remind them that you haven't harmed anyone/violated anyone's rights and that owning something shouldn't be made illegal for a person such as yourself.
2. Ask them to cite the moral (not legal) authority which sanctions them to tell you that you can't own something while referencing the above.  If it's wrong for me to tell someone who hasn't harmed anyone, then it's wrong for them or any number of people to do the same.

ETA:
3. If asked why you "need" something, remind them that "need" has nothing to do with owning something in a free society.

I'm considering taking Tuesday off to go down.  I live in Henderson, right at the intersection of 104th and US 85.  IM me if you decide you're going.

I'm also going Tuesday. My rep (K. Priola) emailed me about this and we ALL need to be there! I live in Brighton and would be happy to give someone a ride. Just IM me!

Here is a map of the Capital Building.  

Edit: incorrect information

I just got this email from Kevin Grantham:

We
need you to come to the state Capitol on Tuesday, February 12 and
Wednesday, February 13 to show your opposition and speak against the
following anti-gun bills:

 

You're incorrect, the 7:30 meeting is the Capital Development Committee, which is not hearing any of the gun bills.  On Tuesday, the bills will be in Judiciary upon adjournment of the House at about 10am.  The Judiciary committee will be meeting on the 2nd floor in the Old Supreme Court Chambers.

I had planned to go, but work obligations will prevent it.

My notes on the 10 round ban:

1. The legislation as it appears in the last draft I saw prohibits possession of magazines made after the effective date, but as any prosecution would require proof of the date that the magazine was made or entered Colorado, and magazines are typically not serialized, it is simply unenforceable in any way.

2. While the bill prohibits transfer of magazines of greater than 10 rounds, as mentioned above, such magazines are not serialized and this provision cannot be enforced.

3. As there are probably hundreds of thousands if not more than a million magazines already in Colorado, and tens of millions of magazines nation wide, covered by the bill, the legislation would not significantly or even measurably reduce the number of magazines of capacity greater than 10 available to any person.

4. There is no provision for, nor appropriation of funds to pay for, collection and serialization of existing magazines, as needed for points 1 - 3, even if feasible.

5. Indeed, during the 10 year period where the Federal AWB prohibited new magazines of greater than 10 rounds to any but military and law enforcement, the only effect was to, at best, double the price of a grandfathered magazines at the time.  This fact reinforces the futility of the effort.

6. The very assumption that somehow the eleventh round of a magazine is more dangerous than the first 10 ought to be enough to reveal the basic logical fallacy of the effort.  And the fact that changing out 10 round magazines is itself hardly a deterrent to criminal conduct.

7. As magazines for some firearms that were only issued with greater than 10 round magazines may not be produced, this would constitute a ban on some firearms with no rational basis.  Semi-automatic firearms with magazines greater than 10 rounds have been available in the United State for over a century, and are found in the nation in the millions.  Therefore they are in common use among Americans and are protected under the Heller and McDonald decisions of the US Supreme Court.

Anyone may use my notes.  Don't just testify with "Second Amendment - read it bitches"

I called every single person on the House Judiciary Committee today.  Got 2 staffers, 2 messages, and the rest were mailboxes which were"full"

I just called them all also. Over half had full mail boxes. I will try again later tonight and tomorrow.

My mistake.  I think i was reading an older version of the schedule.  Anyway, it looks as though you are correct.  The map is still handy if people haven't been inside the capital before.  I'm hoping to make it in for the meeting tomorrow.  

I'm about to fire up the word processor and write some letters that I will email off.  I wish I could be there tomorrow and Wednesday but I have class both days.

Fantastic notes, if I talk I'll use them.

Is there any way to get updates on how the hearings are going?  I'm in cubicle land.  Thanks.

I'm in sporadic contact via txt with Jared Wright.

Awesome work man

Thanks, TGC.  Keep us posted, please!

I have been in hectic hell since the weekend and can't be in Denver to testify.  I think the previous bullet points are outstanding and will use them myself.  I've gone the opposite route and gotten chatty (imagine that) in the hopes of educating.  If any of the below might be useful, please feel free to paraphrase and reuse:

"On the matter of magazine capacity, to say that an arbitrary number of rounds in a magazine is "safe" is illogical and unreasonable.  The purported intent is to reduce criminal misuse but this is not borne out by the facts.  Common crime (not that it is ever common to its victims) is not influenced by magazine capacity - robbery is a crime of intimidation; murder is often committed with as few as one or two rounds.  Horrors such as mass-shootings are planned events - Dylan Klebold used a "ban-compliant" carbine and simply planned ahead to bring thirteen ten-round magazines.  Attackers will always have the luxury - should they choose to obey any law, since they are intending to commit the worst of offenses - of simply working around any restrictions to achieve their goals.

Defenders, however, are perpetually at a disadvantage.  We simply do not know that we are defenders until we are attacked.  And, at that point, we have no assurances on how many attackers we will face, what kind of onslaught will be unleashed, how determined our would-be killers are to achieve their goal or what effort will be required on our part before police can arrive to assist us.  Last month, Melinda Herman was forced to shoot a home invader while she cowered in a crawlspace, emptying her six-shot revolver.  Even after being struck by five of those bullets, her attacker was able to beg for his life, flee the home and drive away before crashing his vehicle.  He survived.  Had he been of a mind to press his attack - or if he had accomplices in the home - Melinda would have had no means of continuing her defense.

Defensive shooters are taught to “shoot to stop the threat”.  This may require one round, it may require many.  There may be one attacker, there may be many.  Unlike sociopaths who plan their attack against defenseless targets, a law-abiding gun owner can never predict with any accuracy how many rounds may be necessary to save his or her life.  Any magazine restriction would have little effect on crime but a potentially lethal effect on law-abiding citizens.

On the matter of background checks for all firearms transactions, my - and many shooters' - objections boil down to the simple facts that such checks lack effectiveness in stopping criminal activity and, frankly, that there has been a repeated demonstration of dishonesty on the part of government in its use of the data collected.

By definition, criminals do not obey laws.  The Newtown murderer killed the rightful owner of the guns he used, making a background check moot.  The Columbine killers used straw purchasers to acquire their arms - also already illegal.  The Aurora murderer had no criminal history that would have been caught by any background check - nor would he have been with an expansion to private transactions.  Criminals will ignore any expanded laws as easily and willingly as they do the current regulations.  Those prohibited persons whose transactions are denied will most likely follow one of the aforementioned paths to being armed.

And background checks cannot be discussed without raising the specter of registration.  Requiring an FFL to run a background check also requires them to keep a form 4473 for the transaction.  This form must be kept on file for future reference and, should the FFL go out of business, all forms must be surrendered to the BATFE.  This means there is a record of who owns what specific firearm by make, model and serial number.

Long guns in New York City have been required to be registered since 1967 and city council members at that time promised that the registration lists would not be used for a general confiscation of law-abiding citizens' weapons.  In 1991, New York City Mayor David Dinkins pressured the City Council to ban private possession of many semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that fell under a newly-defined category called an "assault weapon", using those registration rolls to identify and target owners of such arms.  Around the same period in California, owners of the SKS family of rifle design were told that their rifles fell outside the definition of "assault weapons" and they were free to keep them - so long as they were registered.  In less than a year, the definition of "assault weapon" was modified to include SKS rifles and owners received the same "sell or surrender" notice.  The recently-passed "SAFE Act of 2013" in New York State included a provision to allow the State Police to autonomously modify the definition of "disqualifiers" that can pull additional arms under the umbrella of what constitutes an "assault weapon".  Adding insult to injury, it was later revealed that the act as originally proposed include a provision for physical confiscation of banned arms by law enforcement.

To expand required background checks to private sales will create a de facto registry and recent history has proven to gun owners that this will inevitably lead to future legal risk.  Our trust has been betrayed and our willingness to compromise has led to our demonization too often to believe that any good can come from this.  It treats us with a discriminatory presumption of ill intent, instills alarm over - and resistance to - blatant infringement of our Second Amendment rights and offers little to nothing in return when it comes to public safety."

Txt'ing with another member he is on the speaking list!

Audio feed of hearings today

http://www.leg.state.co.us/clics/clics2013A/cslFrontPages.nsf/Audio?OpenPage

I'm on the speaking list but i doubt i will actually get to speak. There are hundreds of pro gun people here.

That's good news!

So far no pro gun people have testified.

The mag ban hearing may be rescheduled.

Thread with updates is in GD

1229 Looks likes it will be a 7-4 pass from what I just saw via DP video feed

it did pass

They both passed, although it appears as if the limit on magazines was ammended to 15 rounds.  This was touted as "reasonable".  I was at the meeting for the background check testimony, and heard the stupid line, "If we can just save one life, it will be worth the reasonable restrictions" several times.  I wish I had been able to testify.  I would have mentioned that cutting the index fingers off of violent criminals would probably also result in at least one life being saved since they would have less ability to pull a trigger.

Both results were pre-ordained, and it was probably wishful thinking to believe any of the members were going to be convinced to swich positions.  Someone else at the meeting told me that this was more to lay out the case for future court challenges.  We'll see.

any way to find out how the committee vote went down? (who voted yea or nay)

Tin foil moment, here.  I noticed there's a 30-day provision for background checks in 13-1229.  Since the point is point-of-sale verification of being "safe" to buy a gun, this doesn't make sense.  I can get a check on the 4th, beat my neighbor into a coma on the 7th, buy a gun with my "clean record" on the 29th and finish the job on the 30th.

Then it struck me - what are the odds that this is "lube" for an upcoming ass-raping of "cooling off periods"?

Party line vote on both:

Kagan - Y
Lee - Y
Buckner - Y
Court - Y
Gardner - N
Lawrence - N
McLachlan - Y
Murray - N
Pettersen - Y
Salazar - Y
Wright - N

McLachlan added an amendment to the magazine bill to increase capacity from 10 to 15.  That's about the only good thing I can say about him.

thanks I will call my future rep (Murray) and let her know that I appreciated her vote

FYI, if you ever want to know how committee votes go, you can go Here.  Click on Summaries by Committee.  You search by committee (in this case, House Judiciary), then bill, then you see the link to the votes.

Any idea how the general assembly will vote?  Is there a list of how all the members are voting?  I'm moving to CO soon and was considering changing my residence status to CO but this whole mess changes everything.  

Who knows?  I've heard that all Republicans have vowed to vote against any gun control bill.  

Currently the House has 65 members, 28 Republican and 37 Democrat.  Assuming full cooperation by Republicans, we need 5 Democrats to switch sides on the issue.

In the Senate there are 35 members, 15 Republican and 20 Democrat.  Again assuming full cooperation by Republicans, we would need 3 Democrats.

I have no idea how likely any of that is.  I'm sure there are a couple Rural Democrats that might be vulnerable, but don't know which ones.

ETA: The background check bill has to pass through appropriations since it is projected to cost $1.6 million per year.  There's a chance it could get voted down there as well.

When it goes to Senate, will all the Senators vote or just a committee?

I had the exact same thought process. Being that there are 65 house reps, it would be quite a bit of work to contact every one and try and get a position. I imagine there will be a few republicans that flip sides, and I know my district democrat has said he'll go against any gun control bills, so it could get interesting in the house.



The senate on the other hand is easier, on 35 people and many of them have already made their positions very clear on the gun issue. EVERY REPUBLICAN in the senate will oppose any new gun laws, I have received an email or spoken on the phone with all 15 of them confirming this. So that leaves us with 25 dems of which we need 3 to flip. I have spoken to or received letters from all of them as well, and many will not take a position at this time. So here are the ones that I spoke with that seemed the most swayable-




Sen. Angela Giron (D) Pueblo- Phone: 303-866-4878


E-mail: [email protected]





Sen. Gail Schwartz (D) Snomass Village- Phone: 303-866-4871


E-mail: [email protected]





Sen. John Morse (D) Colorado Springs- Phone: 303-866-6364


E-mail: [email protected]





Sen. Matt Jones (D) Longmont- Phone: 303-866-5291


E-mail: [email protected]





Sen. John Kefalas (D) Fort Collins- Phone: 303-866-4841


E-mail: [email protected]





Sen. Cheri Jahn (D) Wheat Ridge- Phone: 303-866-4856


E-mail: [email protected]





Sen. Andy Kerr (D) Lakewood- Phone: 303-866-4859


E-mail: [email protected]





Sen. Linda Newell (D) Littleton- Phone: 303-866-4846


E-mail: [email protected]





Sen. Lois Tochtrop (D) Thornton- Phone: 303-866-4863


E-mail: [email protected]





Sen. Michael Johnston (D) Denver- Phone: 303-866-4864


E-mail: [email protected]





Sen. Lucia Guzman (D) Denver- Phone: 303-866-4862


E-mail: [email protected]
[email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected],
[email protected]



 

It looks like they are planning to put all four bills up for vote on Friday.  Time to put the pressure to your Reps, and any Dems especially who may be worried about their seat.  I forwarded a list of comments I was unable to make on Tuesday to the Republican Reps on the Judiciary committee for use in their debate.  If there is a point that you don't think has been made yet, please let your Rep know, so they can possibly bring it up to persuade others to vote against these bills.