Back Home and Back in the Fight...

Home from a few days in the Big Easy with my Sweetie...tomorrow at the Colorado Legislature and the Governor's office.

We got a legal opinion late tonight on the proposed magazine capacity law that I'll take to the Senators and the Governor, and it is a BITCH! Essentially, despite assurances to the contrary, the grandfather provision provides much less protection than the bill's authors claim. In short, the bill claims that owners of grandfathered magazines need only assert that the magazines were obtained prior to the (proposed) Ban should they be found in possession of said magazines.

However, according to the legal opinion we now have in hand, the idea that all one need to do is "assert" ownership if the magazines prior to the date of the Ban is pure BS...rather, the wording of the law is something less than an "affirmative defense." Le me explain how that works...

...let's say that you are a prairie dog hunter panning on the dog hunt of a lifetime. So you and a friend fly into Denver International with a couple of high-zoot ARs and a dozen standard P-Mags. You collect your guns, rent a car and head  out of the airpower...before you can get to I-25, you're rear-ended by your basic local stoned hippie. The police come, and in the course of their investigation one of the officer notices a gun bag full of 30-round magazines.

Suddenly, you and your friend are arrested...your magazines and guns are seized...your rental car is seized...you and your friend are taken to jail, booked and thrown behind bars until a date can be set for the judge...the whole time you and your friend are saying, heck, you assert that you owned these magazines BEFORE the Ban went into effect...the police say that's just fine, the judge will sort it out.

You finally find a criminal attorney, who arranges for you to put up your house as collateral for bail to get you and your friend out of jail...instead of shooting prairie dogs, you're huddled in a Denver hotel waiting to go before a judge. In a couple of days you go before the judge and your criminal attorney, to whom you have paid a $10,000 retainer, says that you and your owned these illegal magazines prior to the Colorado Ban. The judge looks at the prosecutor, who shrugs. The gavel comes down and the judge says, "Dismissed."

You breathe a sign of relief...yes, you'r e out $10K to the criminal attorney and your long-planned hunting trip is in shambles, but at least you and your friend are not in the slam. Denver says you're lucky in tat the rental car has not yet been auctioned off, so you get it back after only a few hundred dollars. When you ask about your 2 $2000+ ARs and the dozen P-Mags, you're met with incredulity...the guns and accessories, the police tell you, were quite correctly "seized for cause," that is, you did indeed break the law by possessing "illegal" standard capacity magazines...the fact that the judge kicked you out was an "affirmation defense," a downstream action after the perfectly legitimate address. In short, you don't get the guns, magazines and accessories back...ever.

So instead of the prairie dog hunting trip of a lifetime, you're out $10,000 (or more) for a criminal attorney, bail money — a portion of which will be returned to you — your expenses for staying in the Denver area while your case is being considered, the loss of ALL your guns, magazines and gear, permanently, and the sheer heartache, fear and sleepless nights to yo, your friend and your family.

THIS is what we're fighting!