Insisting on local control, three cities in Boulder County voted to adopt their own gun-control ordinances Tuesday night in response to 2021 legislation that gives local governments power to enact gun regulations stricter than state laws.
Before the 2021 law, Colorado statutes preempted cities and counties from passing any regulation that prohibits the sale, purchase or possession of a firearm. Senate Bill 21-256 was among several bills introduced in the aftermath of the mass shooting at a King Soopers in Boulder.
With the ordinances’ passage, Boulder, Superior and Louisville now have stronger gun laws on their books — ranging from banning assault weapons and large-capacity magazines to prohibiting open carry in public places to requiring a waiting period before the sale of a firearm.
The local governments’ actions follow mass shootings in the past few weeks, notably in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school, the deadliest shooting in a school setting since Sandy Hook Elementary a decade ago.
The city of Lafayette is considering similar gun regulations. Edgewater, a city in Jefferson County that sits between Lakewood and Denver, also is considering gun ordinances.
Denver was the first to use the 2021 law when it banned "ghost guns" this past January, and then last month prohibited concealed carry in city buildings and parks with exemptions for law enforcement personnel.
Residents on both sides of the gun debate turned out on Zoom and in person throughout Boulder County to voice their opinions during Tuesday’s multiple public hearings.
Supporters of Boulder's six ordinances, many of whom said they are parents who believe more gun regulation will keep their kids safer, became emotional at times. “The gun violence happening across our country is preventable if legislatures take action,” said Christina Gardner, a Boulder mother of three.
But critics of the measures said more gun laws, like longer wait periods for customers who want to buy firearms for protection, keep people from defending themselves when they are most vulnerable.
Fred Barton, a Boulder gun shop owner, said the issue is too important to be decided by a group of politicians. “This is a very decisive issue for our community. I would highly suggest and recommend putting the issue to a ballot measure so that the entire community can have a voice.”
Just over the border from Boulder to the east, women wearing red “Moms Demand Action” T-shirts and touting gun control squared off against gun responsibility advocates during Louisville’s city council meeting, which lasted just over two hours.
“I understand the outrage and I feel the pain; however, I feel the measures being considered here are dealing with the symptom and not the root cause,” said Aaron Davenport. “An inanimate object does not hurt anyone.”
Though Louisville residents were affected by the King Soopers shooting, Mayor Ashley Stoltzman told The Gazette the impetus for the city council’s unanimous vote on gun measures was SB 256, which repealed a 2003 law commonly known as preemption.
“We started talking about this when the state law lifted the preemption,” Stoltzman said.
About an hour and a half into the Louisville meeting, Stolzman teared up and accepted a tissue from a colleague when she revealed that she went to high school in Jefferson County and played softball with Columbine students the year of the Littleton mass shooting.
“I know we are a town of only 8 square miles, but we have to start somewhere,” she told The Gazette.
Opponents, however, called the proposals a patchwork of measures that will never work because simply walking across the border from one city to the next determines whether a person has violated an ordinance.
“This is the biggest assault on our Second Amendment right in Colorado history — all made possible by the freedom-hating Jared Polis,” Jon Caldara, who leads the Independence Institute, said in a text message. Caldara is a regular columnist for The Gazette and Colorado Politics.
“By signing the bill to end the state’s longstanding gun preemption on local anti-gun ordinances, Polis opened the floodgates to gun grabs all over Colorado,” he said in a column for The Gazette.
SB 256 drew heated debate from both sides of the gun debate when it made its way through the 2021 Legislature.
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Silt, who is well-known for her pro-Second Amendment stance, accused Democrats of creating the bill to impose total control on guns, not local control.
“Gun laws don’t deter people from committing gun violence,” she said, citing a variety of gun control laws passed in Colorado on background checks and gun-free zones. “This legislation is an unconstitutional attempt to strip the people of Colorado from purchasing, selling and even carrying firearms.”
On the other hand, Eileen McCarron, with Ceasefire Colorado, is congratulating the cities of Boulder County. “Boulder is bold,” said McCarron, “It’s low-hanging fruit for municipalities to try this, and the fact that it’s happening in Boulder County is a direct response to the shootings that happened a year ago.”
