Democrats wandering in the political wilderness and wondering how the heck they can repair their toxic brand in the eyes of the electorate are ignoring one easy step they could take: quit criminalizing the right to keep and bear arms and go after real criminals instead of lawful gun owners. 

That, however, is a bridge too far for the Democratic Party, which is in lock-step with the gun control lobby at every level of party leadership. Even supposedly “moderate” Democrats like Colorado Gov. Jared Polis can’t show their independence from anti-gun activists, which means the gun laws in the Rocky Mountain State are about to get a lot worse.

Colorado lawmakers on Friday sent three gun-control measures regulating the sale of ammunition and firearms to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk for passage into law.

The bills now waiting to be signed include Senate Bill 3, which would limit the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms to only people who’ve passed a background check and training course; House Bill 1133, which requires retailers to keep ammunition locked; and House Bill 1238, which requires additional security at gun shows.

The three bills received final procedural votes in the House and Senate on Friday. Polis is expected to sign all three. He has 30 days to do so — or to veto them — before the bills pass automatically into law.

Gun-control advocates celebrated the bills’ passage — and what they described as Colorado’s role as a “national leader” on gun violence prevention — in a statement Friday afternoon.

“As the federal landscape has made it significantly more challenging to combat gun violence in our communities, and we are seeing state legislatures across the nation cower at the will of the extremist gun lobby, today, I am proud to be a Coloradan,” Julie Ort, a gun violence survivor who now volunteers with the Colorado chapter of Moms Demand Action, said in the statement.

See, when legislators reject the “ban-our-way-to-safety” approach of the prohibitionists, they’re cowering at the will of the extremist gun lobby, but when they kowtow to Moms Demand Action, they’re oh-so courageous. 

While Ort might be proud to be a Coloradan, she should be ashamed of being a gun control activist. Not only will these bills make it harder for folks to exercise a fundamental civil right (and in the case of the bills targeting gun and ammo sellers, make it more difficult for them to do their jobs), the state of Colorado has put a passel of other restrictions in place since 2013, and violent crime has gone up across Colorado for most of that time period. 

According to the Common Sense Institute, violent crime rates in Colorado were at historic lows in 2013. Between then and 2023, however, the violent crime rate shot up from 305.3 per 100,000 residents to 474 per 100K; all while Democratic lawmakers were imposing magazine bans, universal background checks, “red flag” laws, carry restrictions, and other anti-gun measures including the repeal of the state’s firearm preemption law, which prevented localities from imposing their own local ordinances more restrictive than state law. 

Those laws have done nothing to make Colorado a safer place, and the bills heading to Polis for his signature are just more of the same. Instead of focusing on the relatively small number of Coloradans who are committing violent crimes, Democrats at the statehouse in Denver are choosing instead to criminalize the fundamental right to keep and bear arms. 

To be fair, their anti-2A stance hasn’t cost Democrats any political power in Colorado, but their own extremism doesn’t play well in purple or red states and battleground districts. If Democrats are serious about reaching middle America, they could start by not trying to grab their guns.