Colorado’s Democratic-controlled House on Sunday passed a bill that would ban the sale and transfer of semiautomatic firearms, a major step for the legislation after roughly the same bill was swiftly killed by Democrats last year.

The bill, which passed on a 35-27 vote, is now on its way to the Democratic-led state Senate. If it passes there, it could bring Colorado in line with 10 other states — including California, New York and Illinois — that have prohibitions on semiautomatic guns.

But even in a state plagued by some of the nation’s worst mass shootings, such legislation faces headwinds.

Colorado’s political history is purple, shifting blue only recently. The bill’s chances of success in the state Senate are lower than they were in the House, where Democrats have a 46-19 majority and a bigger far-left flank. Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, has indicated his wariness over such a ban.

      • @HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        227 months ago

        You ever seen cops shoot?

        I’ve seen a bunch of 'em get DQ’d from matches for being unsafe, or drop out when it was clear their scores were trash.

          • @TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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            7 months ago

            They use hacks like ESP and wallhacks.

            In all seriousness, though, it’s only because they always outnumber and have more resources than the person/people that they are in a shootout with. Not because they are better with firearms than an average gun owner who also trains with their firearm.

            • @blazera@lemmy.world
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              47 months ago

              and have more resources than the person/people that they are in a shootout with.

              Yeah, and that’s what you’re up against thinking your guns are keeping the government in check.

              • @HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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                67 months ago

                …And yet, when cops see protestors that are as heavily armed as they are, historically they suddenly get very, very respectful. When the Proud Man-Children discover that the BLM protestors are armed and disciplined, they suddenly lose all their courage. Cops suddenly get really, really nervous when they realize that if they start shit, they aren’t going to have a numerical advantage. When you’ve got one suspect and 20 cops though?

                Cops aren’t there to protect or serve the people; they’re there to protect and serve the status quo.

                But damn, people sure do hop on cops’ dicks whenever someone says they might want to be able to protect themselves rather than hoping that cops will do it.

                • @CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works
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                  57 months ago

                  Gun grabbers will say they don’t trust police and then say they’re the only ones who should be armed in the same paragraph. It’s wild.

                • @blazera@lemmy.world
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                  37 months ago

                  I think most examples of armed protests in the US are on the side of police. But US police are also an example of America’s problem with too many guns, they kill way too many people and should also have fewer guns.

                  • @HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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                    37 months ago

                    Many, yes. But people on the left are slowly starting to learn the lessons that the Black Panthers and Malcolm X were trying to teach us. (…The lessons that ultimately got Malcolm X killed, IMO.) Groups like the John Brown Gun Clubs are working with and helping to train activists in order to for them to protect themselves from Proud Man-Children, and “Patriot” groups, since cops won’t.

                    Power is never given willingly; power must be taken. The police have power, and asking nicely gets you nothing.

              • @bastion@feddit.nl
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                27 months ago

                Not really. At the point where there’s consensus that we are, in fact, in a civil war, then:

                A) you’re not some nutjob holed up in his house using his neighbor as a hostage B) there are others, and organization is doable

                Yes, the government has organization and experience. Hopefully, it’ll just never be an issue. Likely, there would be internal divisions, as well. But being ready for it to be an issue can both help prevent it becoming one, and give one the capacity to have an impact if it does become an issue.

                • @blazera@lemmy.world
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                  27 months ago

                  If things get to an actual civil war where tyrannical government is willing to use its resources, i think you are severely underestimating the resources. The satellite and drone intel, the ability to destroy routes civilian vehicles can take, the aerial strikes. Civilians arent gonna get together no matter the heads they can put together and build competing anti air capabilities. Its not like a battle of damage numbers in a game, its ability to even play the games that they can. Like a well armored knight fighting against squirrels, the numbers dont matter, the little claws cant get through steel.

                  Likely, there would be internal divisions, as well.

                  Thats all you can hope for, thats the only way civilians in any developed country survives:having a government that doesnt want to kill them. Armed population or not, it really has no effect.

      • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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        117 months ago

        The goal isn’t to beat the cops. It’s to defend against neonazis.

        Do you think the cops are gonna disarm neonazis? Or will they just use gun bans as an excuse to murder more black people?

        • @blazera@lemmy.world
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          77 months ago

          Guns dont defend shit. We have all the guns, its not going well. A gun ban at least slows down supply. And starts a long path to becoming like developed countries that arent murderous gun nuts like we are.

          • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Tell you what. How about you pass a law to disarm people based on their hateful ideologies FIRST. Make Nazism illegal, then disarm, prosecute, and imprison the neonazis, by force of law. They are currently trying to ignite a new Civil War against America, yet you want to disarm the rest of us in the face of that.

            Fix that, then we can discuss disarming law abiding citizens.

            You gonna address the question I asked? Cops only use gun bans as an excuse to kill more black people.

            • @CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works
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              57 months ago

              Imagine trusting a neoliberal government to take the guns away from those leftists deem dangerous. You really don’t see how that might go awry?

            • @blazera@lemmy.world
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              47 months ago

              I think youd have a hard time defining and identifying nazis in legal terms.

              And i dont trust any gun owner to be a law abiding citizen, we’re all animals that can get very emotional. And we have the results of that in our horrendous homicide rate.

              • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                Really? Because Germany managed it. Nazism is illegal there. They prosecute anyone who professes Nazi ideas. I don’t care how hard it would be. You think confiscating all the guns is easier?

                I don’t care who you trust. I care that this nation is too foolish and cowardly to root out the cancer it has harbored since long before it was founded. Ban sympathy for the Confederacy. Ban Nazi ideology. Prosecute those who profess it. Ruin those who fund them. Cleanse the police departments of all the Nazi cops. We will never be free of them until the day we make their ideologies illegal.

                Until then, piss off trying to disarm the millions of people who only wish to defend their homes from exactly those people pushing for civil war.

                Gee whiz, you sure don’t want to address the fact that cops only use gun bans as an excuse to murder black people.

                • @blazera@lemmy.world
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                  27 months ago

                  I would love to do how Germany does, no one gets a gun.

                  Most of their nazi ban entails antisemitism, which i dont think covers a lot of people you wouldnt want to have guns. It also entails self labeling nazis, people wearing nazi uniforms, using swastikas, etc. Again, i dont think thats gonna cover most of the people youd want it to. Its better than nothing and id support it here, but its not gonna be very effective at keeping guns away from people with various nazi beliefs.

                  Gee whiz, you sure don’t want to address the fact that cops only use gun bans as an excuse to murder black people.

                  What gun bans?

                • @bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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                  17 months ago

                  just a heads up, west germany famously integrated nazis into the government and still has them to this day.

            • bufalo1973
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              37 months ago

              There a better way: if you don’t have a valid reason* to have a gun, you can’t have it. If you have a valid reason* but not to carry it, you can’t carry it and you can only use it in a target range.

              • Hunting, basically.
            • @bastion@feddit.nl
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              27 months ago

              I could go for a law that states something like:

              To the degree that you attempt to control or suppress another person or group, you may be controlled or suppressed accordingly.

              This is magical law, but we may as well make it mundane law, too.

              • @intensely_human@lemm.ee
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                37 months ago

                Like I’m in a different category than the Nazis, who rounded up and murdered Communists and Trade Unionists during the Holocaust.

                Read a book dude. History is well-documented.

                • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  And yet you downvoted the suggestion of making Nazism illegal. You’ve read books, and despite that, still thought that banning Nazism was a bad idea.

        • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)
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          7 months ago

          Do you think the cops are gonna disarm neonazis? Or will they just use gun bans as an excuse to murder more black people?

          You think black people with firearms are less likely to be shot by police?

          The goal isn’t to beat the cops. It’s to defend against neonazis.

          How’s that going? Because from the outside, it looks like this.

          image

          • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Do you not think cops are more likely to kill black people if there’s a gun ban regardless whether they are armed?

            Yes, I’m well aware of how it looks. They are trying to use public massacres to ignite a civil war. Of course it’s horrible.

            And yet we do almost nothing to prosecute their talking heads who incite those same shootings and the billionaires who fund their rallies. Because hate speech is still somehow free speech. We need to clean up the loopholes in the first amendment before addressing the second.

            Trump is campaigning to become the next fuhrer, not president, yet you dingalings are bound and determined to make sure that we’re disarmed in advance. How stupid is that?

            • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)
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              67 months ago

              Do you not think cops are more likely to kill black people if there’s a gun ban regardless whether they are armed?

              That’s some wicked grammar there, but… no? Why would the cops kill less black people if specific firearms are banned?

              They are trying to use school shootings to ignite a civil war.

              What?

              Also, I feel Americans need to see this, and maybe consider that all these children dying isn’t necessary for their hobby or ‘self defense’ claims:

              USA has eight times the rate (as in percentage, not total_ of firearms deaths as Canada, which has more strict firearms rules. Canada has one-hundred times the rate of firearms deaths of the UK, which has more strict firearms rules.

              That means the USA has 800 times the rare of firearms deaths as the UK. So when this mysterious ‘civil war’ happens, how many children will have died so that you can have that semi-auto AR-15 to fight off the drones of the American military, or the armoured vehicles of your cops?

              Instead of pretending One Man With A Gun is going to do something, maybe try voting locally. Maybe try de-arming your cops?

              • @pokemaster787@ani.social
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                107 months ago

                Instead of pretending One Man With A Gun is going to do something

                I used to agree with this train of thought, why be armed when the government has tanks?

                But the realities of the past several years have shown us that an armed rebellion can be significantly more powerful. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at Myanmar today where the rebel groups are literally 3D printing carbines. A guerilla group with small arms can put serious pressure on a modern military. Will lots of them die? Probably. Will they “win”? Probably not, but they could easily wear down the enemy with attrition. When you need to move a couple dozen men with rifles it’s an entirely different game than coordinating 12 tanks and 500 men, you can employ completely different tactics. Especially on your home turf that you know inside and out.

                Is an armed rebellion happening anytime soon? I sure hope not. But the threat that an armed populace can at the least put some serious hurt on a military/government is a deterrent to tyranny. Just the possibility of it is a huge deterrent, compared to authoritarian countries where citizens aren’t armed and get run over by tanks.

                I’m not saying gun violence isn’t a huge problem, but saying armed citizenry is zero deterrent is just factually untrue.

                • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)
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                  67 months ago

                  But the realities of the past several years have shown us that an armed rebellion can be significantly more powerful. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at Myanmar today where the rebel groups are literally 3D printing carbines.

                  Couple things, but mostly: 1. How free are people in Iraq and Afghanistan, exactly? 2. Rebel groups are illegally printing carbines. The legality of it is meaningless. They aren’t taking on the US military on it’s own soil.

                  If you guys are saying that making death-by-gun the most common form of death for children in the USA, even above cars is worth it for some maybe-one-day-we’ll-be-a-militia-group seems like the most sad and specious logic I’ve ever heard. I’m a parent and theoretically fighting some imaginary war (which we’ve been hearing about for decade after decade…) takes a definite backseat to my kids making it through school un-shot-at.

                  And virtually every armed rebellion that worked happened in a nation where firearms were heavily restricted, so the laws are meaningless. Hell you could only own a smoothbore shotgun at most in the soviet union, and last I checked a whole bunch of those countries had armed rebellions.

                  • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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                    87 months ago

                    I’m not arguing against gun bans because I love guns. I’m arguing against them because humanity has a serious problem with fascism. I’m pointing out that fascists are heavily armed. The cops are almost entirely fascist sympathizers. They selectively enforce gun bans across racial and ideological lines, just like the Nazis did in Germany. They don’t take guns away from Nazis. Instead, they use those laws to gun down minorities.

                    Oh hey, who’s that? Why, is that a psychopathic fascist running for president? I wonder what would happen if he won again, and minorities and leftists were selectively disarmed and his neo-nazi followers weren’t? But how could that ever happen? Cops are there to protect us from bad guys, right?

                  • @bastion@feddit.nl
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                    7 months ago

                    Compare your image above with something extremely similar happening systematically, over and over and over as a populace is rounded up and shipped off to camps.

                    It sucks. Both situations suck. But disarming yourself isn’t the solution.

                    Be armed. Be reasonable, and prefer to de-escalate. But also be willing to fight.

              • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                Yes. Cops have always used gun bans as an excuse to kill more black people, regardless whether or not they are armed.

                Yes. They are trying to use school shootings to ignite a civil war. It’s in their manifestos they leave behind. They say so on their forums. The same talking heads who formented the insurrection are same ones who encourage incels to commit public massacres, then deny all culpability immediately after. They even claim the shootings never happened.

                • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)
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                  37 months ago

                  Yes. They are trying to use school shootings to ignite a civil war. It’s in their manifestos they leave behind. They say so on their forums. The same talking heads who formented the insurrection are same ones who encourage incels to commit public massacres, then deny all culpability immediately after. They even claim the shootings never happened.

                  You think this is a push, from the NRA amongst others, to get people to… ban specific firearms? How exactly does banning semi-auto firearms prevent your Totally-Going-To-Work-Later uprising?

                  [Because congratulations, your efforts to keep your firearms only cost the lives of 4,357 children (ages 1-19 years old) in the U.S. in 2020.

                  By comparison, motor-vehicle deaths accounted for 4,112 deaths in that age range.](https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/03/29/guns-leading-deaths-children-us/)

                  • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    When did I ever say that this is a push from the NRA to get the USA to ban specific firearms?

                    I said that public massacres are being used by neo-Nazis to attempt to ignite a civil war, where they hope to rule over the ashes. I definitely did not suggest that gun bans would prevent these kinds of uprisings. Quite the opposite.

                  • @bastion@feddit.nl
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                    27 months ago

                    It’s not just firearms here, although firearms do admittedly give some fucked up people a voice.

                    It’s the cultural tendency to fuck people up that is the larger issue.

            • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)
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              57 months ago

              Where did I say that?

              And none of these We Need Our Guns For Defense! comments are address that the main cause of death of your children is firearms. How many children have to die to prevent this theoretical tyrannical takeover? Where were all you guys with your guns when a coup was attempted?

                  • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    Dude, if you’re going to try and put words in my mouth, give it half a thought first. That’s twice you’ve demonstrated poor reading comprehension.

                    Armed citizens are the last necessary defense of the nation. We still had a semi-functioning government, and we had to give it the chance to prove itself still viable. Had it failed, things would have gone very differently.

        • @blazera@lemmy.world
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          107 months ago

          Im just always flabbergasted when ever someone thinks theyre keeping the government in line with their civilian arms. Like they suddenly dont know what kinda firepower the US government has.