DENVER — Four cities in Boulder County pushed forward a list of gun control measures this week in what could presage a coordinated effort at the local level to enact firearms reforms in Colorado amid a surge of gun violence in the country and a deepening division over what to do about it.
Boulder, Louisville, Lafayette and Superior passed a series of ordinances Tuesday night — among them bans on the possession of assault weapons, raising the age to 21 to own a gun and imposing a 10-day waiting period before delivery of firearm — in an attempt to address a recent spate of mass shootings across the country alongside everyday gun violence on city streets.
In some of the cities, the measures need a second and final vote in the coming weeks to become official.
“I was a high school student in Jefferson County during the Columbine massacre,” Louisville Mayor Ashley Stolzmann told The Denver Post before the council meeting. “I still have my ‘never forgotten’ pin and vividly remember the adults talking about making a change so this never happens again.
"Here we are 23 years later, my best friend from high school’s daughter is graduating from high school and nothing has been done to change anything.”
The local approach taken in Boulder County, with backing from national gun control groups, could be coming to other Colorado municipalities in the coming months.
An official with the Giffords Law Center told The Denver Post her group worked with Everytown for Gun Safety to “draft a package of model ordinances that these communities relied on to draft their ordinances.”
Tuesday night’s flurry of action on gun control comes two weeks after a gunman shot dead 19 children and two adults at a Texas elementary school and less than a month after another shooter killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
It also comes on the eve of a closely watched ruling expected from the U.S. Supreme Court on a watershed gun case out of New York, where a law restricting the carrying of firearms is being challenged.
Some metro area cities have moved ahead on their own on the controversial issue in recent weeks.
Last month, the Denver City Council adopted an ordinance banning concealed carry permit holders from bringing a gun into any city facility or public park. Edgewater on Tuesday passed on first reading a measure disallowing the open carrying of firearms within the city.
Last year, the state legislature passed a law, SB21-256, permitting towns, cities and counties in Colorado to create their own gun regulations — rules that can be stricter, but not more lenient, than state law. The law was adopted in the weeks after a gunman fatally shot 10 people at a Boulder King Soopers.
“Local regulation is important because local communities understand their public safety needs better than state lawmakers,” Allison Anderman, senior counsel and director of local policy at Giffords Law Center, said. “So local action is important but comprehensive federal laws are still absolutely necessary to address America’s appalling and unique epidemic of mass shootings and gun violence in general.”
But Taylor Rhodes, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, said what happened in Boulder County this week is nothing more than a “coordinated effort of national gun control groups to shove gun control down the throats of residents.”
It was no coincidence, he said, that the effort in Colorado began in left-leaning Boulder County.
“Boulder is the San Francisco of Colorado,” Rhodes said. “So if you want something extreme to happen, you go to Boulder. You see what you can get away with.”
The measures passed Tuesday — which include prohibitions on carrying firearms on city properties, at demonstrations or near polling locations along with requiring signage warning of the dangers of gun ownership at gun shops — will do little to quell gun violence, Rhodes said.
“If I’m a mass murderer and I’m going to kill 19 children and two adults, I’m not particularly worried about a gun charge,” he said. “By definition, criminals are not going to follow the law. The only people they are negatively affecting are law-abiding gun owners.”
Local gun laws, Rhodes said, only serve to “create an unnavigable patchwork of laws” that result in people forgoing their Second Amendment rights “because it’s too difficult.”
Dave Kopel, research director at the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute and a gun rights advocate, said the “anti-gun lobbies are insatiable.”
“Twenty years ago, California enacted everything that the gun control lobbies wanted,” he said. “And then the lobbies decided that wasn’t enough, so there have been 20 years of even more laws, which continue to fail. The lobbies are working hard to make Colorado’s gun laws just as bad, step by step.”
But Superior Trustee Tim Howard said the measures he and his colleagues passed this week “will demonstrate that action is required at every level if we are going to reduce gun violence in our country.”
“Every single elected official, from trustees in small towns like Superior to governors and U.S. senators, has a responsibility to the children in our schools and to every person in our country to take action against the gun violence epidemic our country has come to accept as endemic,” Howard said.
Stolzmann, the Louisville mayor who oversaw more than two hours of emotional testimony before the council voted on the gun control measures Tuesday night, said there is no time left to wait.
“Our action now is the result of a generation that has grown up with lockdown drills and school shootings saying ‘enough is enough.'” she said. “In Colorado, we have seen threats and gun violence in places of worship, the theater, the grocery store and school after school.”
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