PA Bill Number: SB1198
Title: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and ...
Description: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and .. ...
Last Action: Referred to AGRICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS
Last Action Date: May 17, 2024
EDITORIAL: Gun Group harms gun rights :: 04/15/2015
Forget Michael Bloomberg, Gov. John Hickenlooper and legislative Democrats for now. The bigger threat to gun rights in Colorado is Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, headed by political operative Dudley Brown.
The organization raises money billing itself as more pro-gun than the NRA. It is notorious for launching primary challenges against pro-gun conservatives, replacing them with ineffective activists who reject incremental victories and the art of compromise.
The organization clings to unattainable aspirations of all-or-nothing victories. It is the group that nearly sabotaged the recall against former Senate President John Morse, architect of three gun laws Democrats enacted in 2013 at a high political price.
Many leading Democrats, since passing the laws, have conceded they went too far.
"A lot of people, if they'd known how much commotion was going to come out of the high-capacity magazines would've, probably would've looked for something different, looked for a different approach," Hickenlooper told Colorado sheriffs in 2014.
More recently, Rep. Joe Salazar extended an olive branch to Second Amendment defenders. The most controversial of the gun laws forbids magazines that hold more than 15 rounds. As vice chairman of the powerful House Veterans and Military Affairs Committee — where the majority party typically kills minority bills — Salazar has committed to supporting a bill that would increase the limit to 30 rounds. It signifies a potential big victory for Republicans and gun rights in a House controlled by Democrats. It represents the kind of bipartisanship Colorado has seldom witnessed in the past decade.
The compromise would resolve 99 percent of concerns about the magazine ban.
Salazar's cooperative attitude has received applause from Colorado's most tireless and successful Second Amendment defenders. Among them is attorney David Kopel, who helped win D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago in the U.S. Supreme Court — the most important gun-rights victories of the 21st century. Kopel represented Colorado sheriffs in a lawsuit that challenged Colorado's new gun laws. But in the view of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, Kopel is a problem. The group is distributing an ad that features Kopel's photo and the words: "Oppose the Kopel Kompromise."
RMGO political director Joe Neville told CompleteColorado.com the organization will retain an all-or-nothing stance, instructing Republicans the group helped elect to oppose a 30-round bill.
"We're no compromise," Neville said. "We want to see the mag ban repealed outright. We believe that it's not up to the Legislature to decide how many rounds someone needs to protect themselves against tyranny no matter how big or small that tyranny is."
Gun-rights stalwart Jon Caldara, president of the conservative/libertarian Independence Institute, characterized RMGO's counterproductive belligerence in a series of tweets:
"D-Day was a compromise, not a full repeal of Nazism."
"Apollo missions 1 through 10 are compromises. Either we go to the moon or we don't."
"We don't play golf unless we are guaranteed 18 holes-in-one."
To quote President Ronald Reagan: "In this democratic process, which entails compromise, you seek what you think should be done. And if you can only get half of it, three-quarters of it, whatever, and politically it is impossible to get beyond that, I don't think it makes any sense to dig in your heels and say then 'I won't play.' No, you take what you can get and tuck it away in your mind that you'll wait and come back another time and try to get the next bite."
If Republicans can't take a major bite out of the magazine ban this session, Brown and the RMGO should get much of the blame. In the real world, grownups take 'yes' for an answer.
http://gazette.com/editorial-group-harms-gun-rights/article/1549663
