Colorado’s Democratic-controlled House on Sunday passed a bill that would ban the sale and transfer of semiautomatic firearms, a major step for the legislation after roughly the same bill was swiftly killed by Democrats last year.
The bill, which passed on a 35-27 vote, is now on its way to the Democratic-led state Senate. If it passes there, it could bring Colorado in line with 10 other states — including California, New York and Illinois — that have prohibitions on semiautomatic guns.
But even in a state plagued by some of the nation’s worst mass shootings, such legislation faces headwinds.
Colorado’s political history is purple, shifting blue only recently. The bill’s chances of success in the state Senate are lower than they were in the House, where Democrats have a 46-19 majority and a bigger far-left flank. Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, has indicated his wariness over such a ban.
I’d consider a revolver to be semi automatic as well. It shoots each time you squeeze the trigger.
Strictly speaking “one pull of the trigger, one round out of the barrel,” maybe. There is a distinction though.
A double-action revolver gets the energy for moving the next round into firing position and cocking the action from the shooter’s trigger finger. This results in a rather long and heavy trigger pull, or you have to cock the hammer manually with your thumb, if the gun allows it. So with a double-action revolver, there’s an upper limit to rapid, accurate fire. You often get one or the other, seldom both.
Semi-automatics use energy from the cartridge to eject the spent cartridge, strip a new one from the magazine and cock the action for another shot. Because the shooter doesn’t have to do all that work with their fingers, it is much easier to shoot rapidly while maintaining accuracy.
Revolvers seldom hold more than 6 shots before requiring a fairly lengthy and fiddly reload, semi-automatics hold 7 shots minimum with some guns holding as many as 17 rounds before requiring a much simpler magazine swap.
Because of the gap between the cylinder and the barrel allowing hot gases to escape, revolving rifles are rare, which is why they tend to go from a manual loading system like a bolt action to semi-automatic.
Thing is, it doesn’t really matter. Firearm engineering isn’t the cause of shootings. President Kennedy was killed with a bolt action rifle. Columbine was a failed bombing, the murders were done with a shotgun and an open-bolt pistol which AFAIK has successfully been banned. Virginia Tech was done with handguns. A large number of them have been done with AR-15 patterned semi-automatic rifles.
As much fun as it would be to ban all guns, if for no other reason than to hurt the Republicans’ feelings as punishment for being such thoroughly shitty “people”, it’s just not a thing that’s going to happen. Pandora has opened that box. There’s other things that need to happen, like, reality needs to contain the possibility for ordinary people to survive on wages they’ll actually be paid. But, recall that the Republicans are thoroughly shitty, they don’t want that to happen either.