by Ben Bullard
When the police think that regular citizens — people with whom they must constantly interact in their work — are better off with guns than without them, shouldn’t the people making the laws those cops have to enforce be listening?
More than half the 62 elected sheriffs in the State of Colorado are preparing a lawsuit challenging the Constitutionality of broad gun-control laws the Legislature passed and the Governor signed last month.
The Denver Post reported Wednesday that 37 of the State’s sheriffs are presently involved, although more are likely to join. It’s not known yet whether the suit would be filed in State or Federal court.
The suit would take aim at three gun-control measures signed into law by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper on March 20 — eight months after a mass murder at an Aurora theater elicited a call from liberal legislators, governors, Congressmen and the Administration of President Barack Obama to create new laws expanding government’s role in determining who can own what type of gun.
Together, the Colorado legislation limits magazine capacity to 15 rounds, requires universal background checks that encompass private gun sales and then requires the customer to pay for the background check.
At the time the new measures passed, a Republican State Senator voiced what gun-owning Coloradans were thinking: “I’m telling you right now: I will not obey this law. I will willfully and purposefully and civilly disobey this law.”
The sheriffs’ proposed lawsuit would argue the Colorado laws violate the 2nd Amendment’s right to bear arms, as well as the 14th Amendment’s protection of citizens’ immunities from state infringement.
Sheriffs’ support for the suit isn’t quite unanimous, but it’s gaining momentum. One sheriff who said he won’t be signing on attributed his reluctance not to any disagreement he had with the spirit of the suit; rather, he said he just doesn’t believe in suing “anybody for anything.”
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