Monday, July 13, 2015

Colorado Politics and Gun Laws

Via Colorado Peak Politics, comes the story of the rumors that Joe "Pop-Pop*" Salazar won't be running for reelection next year. Holding down a seat considered safe enough to get him a position on the House "kill committee", he famously came down solidly on the side of the rapists and stalkers guild during the gun law debates of 2013.

More recently he seemed to be offering a compromise to the gunnies in the last session when the Senate passed a repeal of the 15 round magazine limit and Mr. Salazar hinted that he might support a 30 round limit. His willingness to compromise was likely helped along by his own 221 vote win in the last election. With Dems holding their majority in the house thanks to several very slim victories, this measure might have picked up enough Dem support to pass the House but Salazar would have had to carry the bill himself as the Republicans were in no mood to compromise on this.

This was probably one of the better moves the Republicans made even though most of the gunnies I know would have been happy to see the new limit. The problem is that once a limit is on the books, it's easy to change the number to whatever you like and there are several Dems who would like to change that to zero. The other drawback would be that it would let the vulnerable Dems claim to be pro-gun even though they had voted the law in in the first place.

Never let a Democrat whitewash his own record.

*Salazar famously suggested that women on college campuses shouldn't be allowed to carry guns as he was afraid that an armed co-ed might turn around and pop-pop some otherwise innocent person who happened to be walking behind her.

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