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For the second time in two days, the Trump Administration has filed suit against a decades-old gun violence prevention law in our state.
On Wednesday, The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against the State of Colorado over the high-capacity magazine ban passed after the 2012 Aurora Theater Shooting. That shooter fired 76 rounds in the theater, killing 12 people and injuring 70 others.
The law makes it a misdemeanor to possess or sell assault weapons that hold more than 15 rounds of ammunition. The state has been sued previously over the law; in one case the Colorado Supreme Court ruled the law was Constititional, and at least one other lawsuit was dismissed, in 2022.
“Colorado’s ban on certain magazines is political virtue signaling at the expense of Americans’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who oversees the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said announcing the lawsuit.
Attorney General Phil Weiser released the following statement regarding the Trump Justice Department’s new lawsuit challenging Colorado’s common-sense large-capacity magazine limit law:
“Using federal civil rights law to put Coloradans at greater risk of gun violence is a dangerous overreach by the Justice Department and this lawsuit turns the mission of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division on its head. Large-capacity magazine laws are responsible policies that satisfy Second Amendment protections, decrease the deadly impacts of mass shootings, and save lives. The state has a duty to protect Colorado residents from gun violence, and I will vigorously defend our state large-capacity magazine limit law from this attack by the Trump Justice Department.”
On Tuesday, May 5, the DOJ sued the City of Denver over its assault weapons ban, enacted in 1989.
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