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Denver Prohibits Concealed Carry in City Properties

For Immediate Release                                          May 16, 2022           

For Information Contact:

Eileen McCarron                                                     www.ColoradoCeasefire.org

Denver Prohibits Concealed Carry in City Properties

The city council of Denver, Colorado tonight voted to prohibit people from carrying hidden handguns into all city owned or leased buildings and parks.

Guns will be prohibited in libraries, recreation centers, concert halls, Denver museums, the Denver Zoo, the Botanic Gardens, all city parks and the 22 mountain parks, which include the world- renown Red Rocks Amphitheater and the Winter Park ski area.

The vote was 9-3.  An amendment to remove parks from the proposal was scuttled. 

Opponents to the ordinance were concerned about enforceability, lack of supporting data and potential racial bias in its use.

Advocates for the proposal shared how concealed carry was foisted on us by the National Rifle Association, and how many of the venues where guns will now be banned cater to families and children.  One advocate enumerated five shootings in parks in the past year, two of them fatal, and memorialized the murder of a policewoman Celena Hollis at the City Park Jazz Festival nearly ten years ago.

Ceasefire’s Eileen McCarron hailed the vote saying “I remember the op-ed we had published decrying the Denver Museum of Nature and Science having to allow hidden handguns on their property. We highlighted that the most dangerous item at the museum wasn’t the ferocious tyrannosaurus rex, but the gun-toting strangers adjacent to the children.”

Last year, following the Boulder King Soopers mass shooting, Colorado repealed most of  its 2003 preemption law and repealed the preemptive portions of its 2003 concealed carry shall-issue law.  Denver is the first Colorado city to utilize this return of local power, enacting a ghost gun ban in January.  Tomorrow, the cities of Boulder and Louisville (Boulder County) will begin consideration of a suite of gun violence prevention measures.  The small town of Edgewater, which hugs Denver on its western border, is underway on consideration of an open carry ban.

As well as Ceasefire, the Colorado Coalition Against Gun Violence, Everytown and Giffords have been working on this effort to capitalize on the changes brought by last year’s preemption repeal (SB21-256).

Colorado Ceasefire has been working for freedom from gun violence since 2000Ceasefire initiated and was instrumental in the enactment of the 2013 Colorado firearms laws and began advocating for an Extreme Risk law in 2016, which became effective January 1st of 2020.  Ceasefire worked closely with members of Colorado’s General Assembly to enact eight-gun reform measures in 2021 and 2022.

 

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