A bill, HB1224, has passed out of committee in the Democrat-controlled Colorado House. HB1224 would ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, and shotgun magazines that hold more than 5. This would ban many common shotguns. It doesn’t matter of the magazine is detachable or fixed. It would make it a crime to give a magazine to a friend to shoot, and then take it back. It also prohibits manufacture for civilian use. Magpul has threatened to leave the state, and take approximately 1000 jobs with them, if this passes. Democrats are showing they care more about their far-left agenda than they do about jobs.
Gun owners in Colorado need to do everything they can to assure that this does not pass. Flood the Capitol!
I watched it last night, including the testimony from the president of MagPul. The most interesting part was him explaining why he’d have to take the company from the state.
The committee chairman told him that he was wrong, and then was corrected. It all stems from the bill allowing manufacture, but then the people doing the manufacturing (and presumably shippers) would illegally possess the magazines during production.
Further, the bill only allows sale to law enforcement – implicitly disallowing sale to civilians, even if that sale is in another state. That issue wasn’t specifically addressed in the discussion, but is pretty clear in the bill itself.
So they expect MagPul to stay, even if that means they have to cut off a significant group of customers.
The hearings are nothing more than a political show.
I forgot to mention that they amended the bill to make the limit 15, and (I believe) 8 for shotguns. Now who makes those 15rd. AR magazines again? Oh yeah, not MagPul.
They were actually smart to change it to 15. That means all the dems with their CCWs and handguns are no longer affected, and it only affects us owners of AR-15’s (and extended pistol magazine owners). Us evil guys. And of course the electorate is more likely to respond if they’re being hurt by a law which means they significantly reduced the affected people.
Although I’m glad I can still buy full capacity mags for my handguns, and 15 is better than 10, this actually may make it harder to fight.
It’s just amazing how many people they just leveled a punitive law against. And the worst thing is they may get away with it.
I would argue that the higher magazine limit is still going to catch a lot of people. My CCW holds 17 rounds and therefore would be affected.
No argument there — but setting it at 15 will clear the majority of pistol magazines, and all of my personal pistol magazines except for the 32 round mag I bought for grins for my 5906.
I’ll still fight against it, of course, but then I know they don’t plan on stopping here and I’m against any kind of magazine ban anyway.
BTW — I didn’t actually read the legislation, but last I heard last night it was still at 10 rounds. I’m trusting previous commenters that it was lifted to 15. And as for the bit on production still being allowed — last I saw there was a provision that all magazines created >{limit} rounds had to have a date of manufacture on them, and that was enough to commit Magpull to leaving. They’d have to date stamp every mag even if it was going out of state.
Adding dates isn’t their beef–Magpul already date-stamps their Pmags with injection mold date wheels.
Yeah, their issue was adding serial numbers, which is difficult to do. And they argued that the date should be sufficient for the purpose they wanted serial numbers, and the committee, including Rhonda Fields, agreed.
But it’s unclear if this, or the modifications to satisfy manufacturers possessing the magazines, made it into an amendment.
I certainly can’t yet find an amended version of the bill available for reading.
Yeah, it was also interesting to watch Rhonda Fields’ behavior as she just didn’t give a crap about what anyone said, and how she had to get help to understand what was in the bill. Note that the bill is about 4-1/3 pages long, and if you take out the summary, it’s down to about 3 pages of actual legislation. But she couldn’t even find the part about manufacturing and had to call in somebody for help.
I can’t help but think that having someone who’s emotionally damaged (she said at the bill’s introduction that she had “lost a son to gun violence”) write a bill on the subject. But then it turns out she didn’t write it, or it appears even read it.
Even the committee chairman didn’t seem to understand what was in the bill. Purest buffoonery.
They did change it to 15, but they were getting confused during the amendment process. They meant to change it to 8 for shotguns, but I’m not certain they did. It was theater though – they’d talked about upping it to 15 before the hearing, and the testimony from mag-pul’s ceo (who was great btw) didn’t seem to register.
“high capacity magazine clips” was the most aggravating phrase i heard last night, but mag-pul did a good job sticking with “standard capacity” & even got a rep to emulate them.
As I said, theater – party line votes on both bills, with the only wavering about making sure mag-pul could sell to .gov’s. The opponents of both bills outnumbered proponents, & the former stuck around til the bitter end, but again this was a show not a deliberative process.
We may be able to stop them in the house. If not then it’ll be a court battle. Did I ever mention that I hate it when things get interesting? :)
They also amended it to allow for the manufacture of their so-called “high capacity” magazines. An obvious attempt to try and look like they are protecting jobs.
I didn’t notice that part, although I tried. There was a lot of confusing mumbling towards the end, and I don’t see any signs of the amended bill being published yet.
That the bill disallows manufacture for sale to civilians in all cases still would mean, I expect, that MagPul will move. I can’t see them giving up a large part of their business just to stay in Colorado.
BTW — there are plenty more bad bills coming in the next few days. Here is a list:
http://cssa.org/news.php
How many pro-gun dems are in the CO legislature? That’s who it will come down to
Pro-gun dems?
The Magpul testimony was the high point of the show. Usually it’s voters who have to do the groveling, not powerful committee chairmen.
Having been there for 12 hours, I left just before the final vote. I’ve not heard about them raising the mag limit to 15, just the Magpul carveout. They seemed to lose interest when they found out that the Golden police chiefs 15 round mag was only for his pistol.
It’s 15 and 8, but I’m still not seeing the carveout.