Colorado town scales back gun control proposals

I’m a fan of preemption. In fact, I wish we had federal preemption when it comes to gun control laws, though there’s no chance of that happening anytime soon.

In Colorado, they don’t have it. They used to but don’t anymore, which is causing a bit of a problem, to say the least.

But public outcry forced one city to at least scale back its attempts at gun control.

The Edgewater City Council has significantly scaled back — at least for now — most of what it planned to consider in way of new gun rights restrictions being encouraged by an anti-gun advocacy group, after dozens of residents and others emailed and showed up at an April 19 work session to express their displeasure on possible ordinances targeting gun owners.

Edgewater is a metro-area home rule city of just over 5,000 people bordered by Denver to the east, Lakewood to the south and west, and Wheat Ridge to the north.

The potential ordinances that the council decided to continue discussion on were:

• Prohibiting open carry of guns city-wide.
• Prohibiting licensed concealed carry in city-owned buildings and parks.
• Prohibiting licensed conceal carry in daycare centers and preschools.
• Banning so-called “ghost guns,” a name given by anti-gun activists to guns made by individuals, but that do not have serial numbers.
• Setting a waiting period for buying a firearm of 3-10 days.
• Dealer regulations with an effective date grandfathering in Edgewater’s one gun dealer.
• Mandatory reporting requirement for lost or stolen guns, which is already covered under state law.

The initial proposal included a local assault weapon ban and a ban on 50-caliber ammunition as well as “armor-piercing” ammo.

Local officials claim reporting of the earlier proposals was “misinformation” despite the information coming from the city’s website.

I guess the city is promoting the fake news and everyone else is wrong for taking them at their word.

Anyway, they got pushback. That’s a very good thing, especially since not everyone who spoke up is on the right politically.

Numerous Edgewater residents spoke out at the April 16 meeting against the proposed measures, with some saying they don’t expect the council to listen, nor do they believe the items taken off the list will remain off the list.

“I’ve watched our city council make laws restricting the freedom of the law abiding in line with progressive political philosophy for a long time,” said resident Larry Welshon. “In this case they are gutting the Second Amendment through incremental disassembly. I’d be delighted to be wrong, but past history proves this council is progressive.”

Welshon reminded the council that in a survey conducted by the city in 2021, only 47 percent of residents believe the council acts in their best interests.

But not all who spoke out against the ordinances could be considered conservative in their viewpoint.

“I am about as liberal as the day is long,” said resident Randy Novack, who said he was a neighbor to one of the council members whom he agrees with most times. “However, I’ve been shooting since I was a kid.”

So it’s not just that the council is progressive, but they’re anti-gun despite some self-described liberals in the city not being anti-Second Amendment.

That’s quite fascinating.

It’s also why preemption is such an issue. Edgewater, Colorado is a city of fewer than 6,000 people. It’s not difficult to imagine someone passing through such a city and running afoul of at least one of these anti-Second Amendment proposals, especially if this is just the beginning as some believe.

Suddenly, someone who intends to abide by the law may well find themselves facing criminal charges. Preemption helps to mitigate much of this.

Of course, since Colorado decided to drink the gun control Kool-Aid, this is the kind of thing we’re going to keep seeing from them.

And people in places like Edgewater, which borders Denver, are ultimately going to pay the price for this particular flavor of stupidity.

The one saving grace, though, is that the people of these cities still get a say and they’re not afraid to tell their community leaders to back off.

Now they just need to shut down the rest of these proposals that will accomplish absolutely nothing.