Whoa, so all of you incredibly intelligent statists commenting on this cheer leading piece have forgotten about civil disobedience? MLK ring a bell? Or is it something else that the left have decided is their exclusive domain?

Gneissguy -

It's one thing for a person of color to sit at the "whites only" counter in a diner. There's nobody in danger there. It's another thing to start firing a couple dozen rounds from a high volume clip because you object to them being outlawed. Now I suppose we could guess that Mr. Brophy would do so only in the safest way possible, but that's just a guess. I sure don't want to be around when he does it. He doesn't strike me as the most mentally stable person in CO.

No, we on the left don't claim exclusive domain on civil disobedience, the way righties do with religion. We just understand better what it actually is, and we don't put anyone else at risk when we do it.

KJ, CR, IA.....lets see, we'll ban something that really doesn't make a difference because your afraid of your shadow, but you will believe its ok to legalize pot....now that makes it ok, your stoned and you don't know any better....now thats a worth while excuse!

"A review by Mother Jones magazinefound that high-capacity magazines have been used in half our nation's mass shootings." Now here we have a source that really is worth dog crap, funny how they never say that the majority of mass shootings only happened at GUN FREE ZONES. Lets keep the information together and not use what we want people to read!

Next time a joint kills 26 people, we'll talk.

Gneissguy

Have you ever read Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau? Read it and find out why what State Sen. Brophy proposes to do is not civil disobedience. Also watch the movie Gandhi.

I seem to be a little late to this party, but I shall attempt to bring a modicum of balance to this discussion.

A few things up front: Not only am I a gun owner and avid competitive target shooter (IPSC/USPSA), but I'm active duty military, posting from Afghanistan. You can guess where I tend to come down on this issue.

While I am a strong proponent of rule-of-law as one of the foundational elements to any successful civilization, I too intend to disobey several of these proposed laws. I intend to purchase several 30-round magazines in my home of record (a different state) and bring them back to my permanent duty station in Colorado. I will not "start firing a couple dozen rounds from a high volume clip" as though a responsible gun owner would ever pull a trigger without being sure of the rounds' eventual resting place.

What the Senator is suggesting to do (as I understand it) is procure a banned magazine in a different state and transport it into Colorado. This will be a protest against its unenforcibility, above all else.

ROFL. . . . So, what you're proposing is "Lock anyone up who doesn't agree with me"

Gotcha! I fully understand that kind of 'tolerance' hahahaha!

No ski that's not sandy means. She wants people who break the law to go to jail not simply people who disagree with. Can you see the difference?

first of all they are called magizines. Second, criminals dont follow the law. here is an article about a criminal using these so called banned clips that have not been used in a crime in your great state. http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/FBI-Ups-Reward-for-AK-47-Bandit-187247981.html there is no value to society for having 3 tv in our house, nice cloths, or 99% of everything we own we dont need to survive. At least guns provide a practial use. the argument " why do you need this" is the worst argument, and they know it. this has become a bigger issue about government power. more gun laws dont work, look at Chicago, some of the toughest guns laws in the country, and over 500 murders, seems to be working well. the real problem are people, but politicians are too weak to go after them and take real safety measures. people like you are the hipocrites that sit at thier desk afraid of the world instead of fighting against the real problems. if you dont want to be part of the real solution, keep being part of the weak following that contributes nothing to society.

Kyle: Pointing out a criminals useage of a gun does not elevate the debate about magazine capacity. If thats all you got, it's weak sauce...

So you are saying that when a criminal or mentally unstable person uses a firearm to kill people, breaking countless laws in the process, what will fix the situation is baning semi auto rifles from being used legally by law abiding citizens? And when someone points out the stupidity and hypocrisy of that thought they are lowering your percieved standars of our national argument?

IRIS: I did not say that and you know full well. I am not for a "ban" on semiautomatic rifles, I am for a limit on the number of rounds in a magazine. Just the fact that you try to change my words shows not only the dishonesty of your stance, it shows the lack of substance. You have nothing on magazine capacity to offer other than strawman arguments, or some sort of freaky personal inconvienence angle. Thats weak sauce when you compare it to real word gun massacres where the gunman only was stopped when attempting to reload. Maybe that works with low info folks, but it don't fly around here...

@ the Dude:

I find that your comments almost perfectly exemplify what I believe to be wrong with the whole gun-regulation discourse.

The burden of proof for any legislation that means to reduce the scope (regulate) of any constitutionally-addressed liberty is always on those who desire the change.

It is therefore entirely appropriate to respond to "Why do you need magazine capacities that large?" with a roundly dismissive "that argument is specious drivel." To do the reverse is to make Plato cry.

There are plenty of "reasons" for a lawful gun owner to own a standard-capacity magazine, ranging from convenience to self-defense, but the gun owner need never speak these reasons. The onus is always on those who would ban them. It is not enough to say "a shooter used them," as it would be laughably fallacious to ban the brand of sneakers he wore simply because he wore them while carrying out his attack.

The baseline argument must be "their use by criminals has been shown to increase the deadliness of a sufficient number of attacks," and that data does not exist (partly due to lack of reporting and partly due to the ambiguity and misuse of some of the language involved). Anything short of that standard boils down to "I do not need, therefore you should not have"

And if that's your argument, I shall (as a free man) depart your company - perhaps to go to the range to put holes in paper.

10 rounds sounds like enough to take out a bad guy right? As a former police officer, I can tell you from my training that statistically speaking, in a close range firefight, trained police officers only hit a human sized target once out of every five shots. These are trained professionals that at the range can have accuracies of 100% and whom I can assure you have mentally prepared themselves for this moment. However, because of the adrenaline and the sudden stress of the moment, the body's small muscles don't work like they should, and four out of five rounds miss. Even with these highly-trained professionals, only 2 rounds will statistically hit their target.

In the case of the average citizen, who does not have the luxury of getting paid to shoot 5 hours a month at the range and therefore does not have the muscle memory, they would be lucky if one round hits from those 10 rounds. People don't always die from one round instantly like they do in the movies. This is why you often hear of police officers being trained to do a double tap to the body and then one to the head. One or two rounds hitting an armed intruder is often not enough to kill him before he can get his own shots off (which will most likely be from a gun with a high capacity mag).

The failure of his dudeness to find any articles about someone running out of ammo before they killed an intruder (bet he didn't even look) does not mean such incidents don't happen.

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Who says it's necessary to kill an intruder? I defended myself against an intruder quiet well with a phone with a long cord until proper official law enforcement arrived. It's the obsession with killing that disturbs me with some gun owners.

@Maria

Any gun owner worth his salt will tell you that it's not about killing. It's about ending the threat. The sound of a round being chambered is usually enough, the sight of an armed citizen is almost always effective, and the decision to take a life is never taken lightly.

What I hear you say is (and forgive the paraphrase) "I am content to be robbed and trust that the threat of the police arriving in 10-20 minutes is sufficient to keep the intruder from killing, injuring, or raping me"

And that is your prerogative.

Legislating others into adopting your position, however, is not (DC v. Heller).

Preach

Like I said I have defended myself from a home invader without using a gun.

@Maria

I'm truly glad that a stout door and the threat of impending police intervention was sufficient in your case to prevent anything worse than theft from happening to you.

If only that was a precedent that could be reliably applied across the entire state of CO, much moreso the entire country.

Preach Reason

For all your moniker states you're really a bit of a drama queen.

@Maria

My apologies. My intent was merely to call attention to the fact that one person's experience cannot _necessarily— be applied in the form of legislative policy that affects large numbers of people across diverse life circumstances.

Also, I welcome any feedback that will help me to become a better rhetorician, so if you could be specific in the ways that you see me arguing in a way that violates the rules of good logic, I would appreciate it.

For example, I wrote of the "threat of the police arriving in 10-20 minutes" without having knowledge of the police response times in your area. That was poorly done, and I apologize.

Preach

First I'd like to thank you for your kind apology. It is very welcomed. As to my recommendations to you on rhetoric I would advise to not to resort to hyperbole. Overstating something makes an argument look weak. As you said police response times differ from area to area.

Also never underestimate the resourcefulness of your opponent. That person may have skills that you are unaware of. For instance I am very well skilled in non-firing weaponry. This doesn't mean I have never used firing weaponry (mostly historical) it just means my skill sets are best in other areas.

And finally try and be as polite as you can. Don't let the heat of a moment get to you. Many people are amazed that I use please and thank you all the time. I was told by my parents that those were magical words and they are. People are so much easier to deal with when you give them a modicum of courtesy.

I again thank you for your apology and look forward to future discussions with you.

How, precisely, do you propose that the State go about prosecuting him?

Assuming that a CO law enforcement officer with any inclination at all to enforce this law (good luck finding one of those) sees the good Senator with one of these evil box-spring things. The onus is then on the state to prove that the magazine was procured and imported after the passage of the bill.

The Senator doesn't need to lie about its origin, he simply needs to exercise his 5th amendment privileges in order to be sent home with his standard-capacity magazine without further ado.

Are you beginning to see the scope of the problem with this legislation?

In addition to what P_R said, the point of these laws is not to get gun owners to stop purchasing these "high capacity mags", which come standard with the guns. The point of these laws is to prevent the mags from being sold at gun stores. Private sale of the mags will still be legal, and now also profitable thanks to the laws.

It's sad when people demonize other people simply for taking a stand against injustice. Civil rights activists are heros when you agree with them and criminals when you don't.

Asserting the absence of "a single incident or story about a law abiding citizen being hamstrung by this . . ." is, itself, rather specious, laughable an literally drivel.

And how feckless to hurl the phrase "gun nut" and claim insult to yourself in the same sentence. Indeed, your name gives a hint, you're a Lowbrowsky Dud.

And shall I recite all of the states that haven't had these California styled laws and yet have had no issue?

Wow, what was that about 'low intelligence'. . . .I would rather think that those who puppet talking points for the sheer sake of being unable to come up with reasons of their own were the less intelligent here.

It's disappointing your lack of knowledge on what makes a 'clip' a 'clip' and a 'magazine' different. LOL

Do you think one must be 'extreme' to know that difference?

They would probably say that he did this to make a point about how cursory the background check was. And that he turned it over to Tucson police immediately, saying that he had no use for it. Here's a link to a story about it:

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Mark-Kelly-buys-AR-15-assault-weapon-to-make-point-4346402.php

As usual, right wingers such as yourself love to tell only part of the story--the part that supports their views--without giving everyone else "the rest of the story."

We don't do that here, Wyatt. We respect the truth. If you had spent any time on this blog, you would know that.

Well, Wyatt Urp, if it was someone who didn't get their talking points from Dimbart.com, the Sludge Report and Faux Snooze, and didn't have their head up their ass as you do, they would know that Mark Kelly did that to demonstrate to idiots like you that the background check is an easy thing to do and that all the "inconvenience" you halfwits jibber-jabber on about is like most of the rest of the "facts" you believe, i.e., non-existant.

But thanks for demonstrating yet again that Richard Hofstadter was right when he described you morons so perfectly:

"It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative -- I borrow the term from the study of The Authoritarian Personality published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates -- because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions"

"Their political reactions express rather a profound and largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways -- a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence ... The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows 'conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness' in his conscious thinking and 'violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere…… The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.'"

Take a look in the mirror, idiot-boy - there you are. Now get back to WackoWorld, your sheep miss you and you've fallen behind on your quota for the day, little boy.

Oh yes, lets cover for mark kelly, who knows that his words are full of mistruths!

http://www.examiner.com/article/mark-kelly-s-story-on-ar-15-purchase-prompts-skeptical-open-letter

Trolls: It's Mark Kelly, Astronaut. Your gun craziness trumps your Americanism apparently...

@TCinLA

Mixed in with all the rhetorical name-calling that lets us know you are using mom and dad's computer, you quoted "conservatives... show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions"

Think I remember hearing about some movement in the 60's that showed those same "signs"... Well if being dissatisfied with the status-quo means someone's an idiot I better grab my name-calling stick and head up to Boulder...

ROFL. . . MP and TC.

Tell me there, why did he wait so long? Why was the rifle left there? Why not immediately take the rifle (and your money) and toss it to the Sheriff's dept before a news story need break? Why not immediately contact the press to expose this ability for a law abiding citizen, who can pass a background check, to be able to purchase a semi-automatic, magazine fed rifle?

Wow MP and TC. . . Now. . . jump up and down, pat your head, and try to rub your tummy in clockwise direction now. . . now, CCW (bahaha!) . . . now, on one foot!

Go read about the German Reichstag 1931-33, as the Nazis got into Parliament and then deliberately obstructed it, then campaigned against it as a "do-nothing" body only they could make work. We all know how that turned out...

Yup, and add to that the similarity of the propaganda tactics of the Nazis and Repugs -- pretty scary. Somewhere I read that the Germans are expressing a willingness for a strong, authoritarian type of leader. Yikes.

What TC has failed to mention is that Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag to cause mass panic in the populace. This had the effect of causing the German people to give up their freedoms for more security. Guess what happened next?

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty." -Ben Franklin

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Funny how some anti-Iraq war activist used the same Franklin quote and were labeled anti-American. Strange how quotes work isn't it?

Great idea!! Maybe some kind of probe would also be appropriate...

why not do that when you buy a car they kill more people than guns, wait i know because it is stupid and your argument it terrible.

Kyle: please remove head from ass before commenting. Thank you.

Maybe Kyle is on to something, TC . . .

You don't have to have a background check to buy a car - unless you finance it, of course. However, you have to have a license to drive a car. To get the license, you have to pass a test. To pass the test, you have to study and practice driving.

So, let's say you can buy a gun with no background check, but you have to have a license to use the gun. To get the license you have to pass a test. To pass the test, etc.

Great idea, Kyle!!

I absolutely agree, mpguy! Several decades ago, I was involved in a shooting, and the person I was with was killed. I escaped death or paralysis by 1/4 of an inch. That which stays with me the most about that day are the sights, sounds, smells--the blood, the screaming, the rapid gunfire (22 semi-automatic rifle), the gunpowder, images burned into my sensory organs. I hate all guns, want them all banned! Give the gun nuts a taste of the horror, let them be drenched in the blood of a loved one.... Maybe, just maybe, they will think twice....

@mpguy:

I take issue with the comparison between getting an abortion and purchasing a firearm.

The "graphic images" shown to perspective abortion patients depict the expected and lawful outcome of their procedure.

The "graphic images" that you suggest showing to perspective gun buyers depict an illegal action by a fantastically small percentage of gun owners. That being said, every gun owner that I have rubbed up against (not academically rigorous, but nonetheless compelling) has been indoctrinated with the responsibility for every bullet's final resting place and is familiar (in theory or experience) with the potential effects of their actions on a living thing.

Perhaps this is the source of many a gun owner's rancor at this rash of legislation: that shooters are all constantly thinking "when I pull this trigger, I am solely responsible for where the round goes. Not the gun, not its manufacturer, not its seller. Me."

He didn't OWN the gun to begin with. He bought it to demonstrate the cursory nature of background checks. Period. And, had he purchased an AK-15 for his own use, I'd trust him, based on his lengthy military background, including his time as a Naval aviator during the Gulf War.

But then, people who get all their facts from Faux News and not-so-breitbart.com wouldn't have the story straight, would they?

What's an AK-15?

(and where can I get one?)

So a lengthy military career is sufficient justification in your mind to trust this man with a firearm? How long is long enough? Does it have to be Navy? Do you suggest appointing yourself legal arbiter over such decisions?

Alva: You lie. The ten round magazine restriction in California is not related to any "assault weapon" definition. Just the fact you so often choose to lie about your guns should disqualify you from owning them in my opinion. The people who were murdered in Tuscon in the Giffords shooting when the loser unloaded his thirty round clip into the crowd do not share your view, and never will. Calling people who disagree with you "retarded" shows your lack of empathy, and callous disregard for the lives of innocents and their families.

Seriously... $10 is too much... You spend hundreds of dollars on a firearm... and you complain about $10.

Don't worry, Alva. You're not alone, here.

I think that we need to take a deep breath and realize that there's two different types of legislation at work here

The first is those laws that enable the prosecution of actions harmful to other people. Laws like those against murder, theft, assault, perjury, etc.

The second type is those laws that restrain a person's ability to commit those first actions. Examples include DUI laws, EPA regulations, and yes, the regulation of the second amendment.

I would posit that the legislature should be much, much more circumspect with those "second category" laws, as they will always reduce liberty, but only potentially enhance safety. I, for one, am in favor of police officers being able to cite folks for drinking and driving, even if they were driving perfectly straight and safely. The cost to liberty is worth the benefit to society.

Gun laws, however, seem to have trouble with this. As it turns out, making laws that actually affect those who choose to commit crime (rather than the drunk driver who does not set out intending to run over a pedestrian) is tremendously difficult, while making laws that only affect people with no will or inclination to harm another person is very easy.

And so, we end up with laws that intend to reduce harm to innocent people (but may not), and will certainly reduce liberty in a way that many feel oversteps what was addressed by the constitution, clarified in Heller.

The language used in that decision protected weapons that were in common use for lawful purpose. What Alva posted here, and what I think every gun owner, law enforcement agent, and military member would say, is that a magazine capacity limit flies in the face of what is in common, lawful use. AR-15s and AK-47s are built for 30-round magazines. M-1As are built for 20. Glock 17s are made for 17, M1911s are built for 7 or 8, and the 9mm on my hip right now holds 15. It was made to hold 15, and I have never used it for an unlawful purpose.

Thanks for reading. I hope that we can all continue to discuss this without undue vitriol.

Almost forgot. Need to say something about the fee. It's not that it's a significant quantity when set next to the cost of a quality firearm, but this is a capitalist society and when we part with our earned money, we want to know what value we are getting for it. So the question of "what is the money for?" would be appropriate if it were $100 or $1. It's also entirely appropriate to distrust a government notorious for raiding fund A to pay for program B.

Whoop. I think you might need to re-English that one.