Connect with us

West

Blue state gun crackdown called out as threat to law-abiding owners

Published

on

Blue state gun crackdown called out as threat to law-abiding owners

Join Fox News for access to this content

Plus special access to select articles and other premium content with your account – free of charge.

By entering your email and pushing continue, you are agreeing to Fox News’ Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which includes our Notice of Financial Incentive.

Please enter a valid email address.

Having trouble? Click here.

A new state tax on guns and ammunition could hurt people who want to protect themselves in Colorado, some residents said, with one county official telling Fox News Digital the move is meant to “turn law-abiding gun owners into criminals” and “reduce gun ownership.”

Colorado imposed a 6.5% excise tax on gun sales in addition to pre-existing federal taxes, the latest in a slew of gun control measures that have passed this year. Proposition KK, the first such measure to be established through a ballot referendum, garnered 54.4% of votes on Nov. 5.

Advertisement

“The fact that they think that all this crime is caused by guns is ridiculous,” El Paso County Commissioner Stan VanderWerf told Fox News Digital. “It’s not caused by the guns at all, it’s caused by evil intent – these laws turn law-abiding gun owners into criminals. But … the point is to reduce gun ownership. The point is to eliminate points of sale to make it harder to purchase, own and procure a gun.

“If the Democrats in the legislature had their way, they would get rid of guns altogether. Because they know that they’re up against the Second Amendment, they’re following a lot of processes that the state of California has done – they slowly close things off on the fringes and then slowly close into the middle.”

COLORADO DEMS PUSH SWEEPING GUN CONTROL LAWS THAT ARE FLYING UNDER NATIONAL RADAR: ‘PUBLIC IS FED UP’

Hammer Down Firearms owners Mike Rickert, left, and Chris Jandro, right, in Wheat Ridge, Colorado characterized Proposition KK as the latest attempt “to kill small gun stores.” (Chris Jandro)

The tax could also hurt small business owners, critics said.

Advertisement

Chris Jandro and Mike Rickert, who have owned Hammer Down Firearms in the far-out Denver suburb of Wheat Ridge since 2012, said they wish that politicians would take a different approach to combating crime. Their store, they said, has seen 34 attempted burglaries since they opened – one successful burglary in 2017 resulted in $200,000 in losses. 

“Nobody seems to care about that, but we’re going to pass laws to affect law-abiding citizens,” Jandro said last week. “Isn’t it fascinating? You have to be taxed for a constitutional right!”

Guns are already taxed at 10 to 11% on a federal level. Rickert and Jandro said that, in addition to the federal tax, they must charge an 8% sales tax in the city of Wheat Ridge. 

“This bill was intended to kill small gun stores – it creates an effective tax rate of about 25%,” Rickert said. “That’s a poll tax, a sin tax – you can’t exercise your constitutional rights as a gun owner.”

The tax will apply to all sales by licensed firearms dealers, manufacturers and ammunition vendors operating within Colorado – but Jandro and Rickert said that the tax will disproportionately impact businesses like theirs.

Advertisement

“[Big sporting goods chains] have a team of lawyers. It’s easier to put us out of business, because we don’t have the deep pockets that big box stores do,” Jandro said.

Expected to generate $39 million annually, the funds will be directed toward mental health and public safety initiatives throughout the state – particularly toward services for victims of domestic violence, according to the bill.

Majority leader and state Rep. Monica Duran – a Democrat, major advocate of the bill, and Wheat Ridge resident – said that Coloradans had “made the right choice to step up and help fill funding gaps in crime victim services” by voting for Prop KK. 

SEMI-AUTOMATIC GUN BAN NIXED IN COLORADO’S DEMOCRATIC-CONTROLLED STATEHOUSE AFTER HISTORIC PROGRESS

Rep. Monica Duran (D), left, talks with Rep. Marc Snyder (D) at house chambers during a special session of the Colorado legislature at the Colorado Capitol in Denver, Colorado, on Friday, November 17, 2023. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

Advertisement

“Without the support from crime victim services as a young single mother trapped in an abusive relationship, there is no way I’d be here today celebrating the passage of Prop KK,” Duran wrote in a statement. “From navigating the challenging judicial system to helping secure child care, crime victim services play a major role in uplifting survivors by providing them the resources they need to start anew. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your support of Prop KK.”

“If you were a domestic violence victim, you think you would want some protection,” Jandro said. “We get a lot of women – because there’s a restraining order, because of their ex, because they want to be protected. Now these women can’t protect themselves from domestic violence, because [Colorado State Representative] Monica Duran thinks they’re safer without a gun.”

VanderWerf called the suite of gun control laws “insensitive to public safety,” saying that additional fines and hoops to jump through will inordinately affect “people that don’t have a lot of resources and feel like they need a firearm to provide for their own personal protection,” especially victims of domestic abuse.

COLORADO HOUSE PASSES SEMIAUTOMATIC FIREARM BAN THAT FACES UPHILL BATTLE IN STATE SENATE

A photo of various handguns on display. (iStock)

Advertisement

“This applies to women who may need to overpower someone more powerful than them,” he said. “A woman who might be a single parent, trying to raise two kids – do they have time to take all these courses? To do all this kind of work? To pay all this money in order to carry a firearm? No, it’s difficult to them.

“It’s like saying if someone robs a bank, the state government will produce an excise tax that will force the other account owners in the bank to pay for the losses. The real way to solve these problems is to deal with mental health correctly, not to treat it as an artifact of something about guns.”

Duran could not be reached for comment at press time.

Proposition KK is the latest in a suite of anti-gun legislation that has passed through the state. Last year, a three-day waiting period was imposed on all gun purchases in the state. 

Advertisement

Another Colorado Senate bill passed this year, 24-066, requires credit card companies to give firearm purchases a specific merchant category code to make those purchases easier to track and tip off law enforcement when an alarming number of gun purchases are made.

Gun sellers are now required to get state permits on top of their federal permits through the ATF, and undergo training through the state under SB 24-1353.

As of this year, gun owners also must lock their firearms in a container when leaving them inside their locked car, under SB 24-1348; another bill requires concealed carry permit holders to undergo an eight-hour training course, rather than a three-hour course, and refresh that training every five years. 

Read the full article from Here

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Montana

Montana Lottery Powerball, Lotto America results for July 4, 2026

Published

on


The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.

Here’s a look at July 4, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Powerball numbers from July 4 drawing

17-38-46-50-69, Powerball: 20, Power Play: 2

Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.

Advertisement

Winning Lotto America numbers from July 4 drawing

09-17-22-35-37, Star Ball: 05, ASB: 02

Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from July 4 drawing

04-13-19-26, Bonus: 07

Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Montana Cash numbers from July 4 drawing

09-13-17-27-33

Advertisement

Check Montana Cash payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?

  • Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
  • Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
  • Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
  • Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.

Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Nevada

11 Nevada Towns With A Slower Pace Of Life

Published

on

11 Nevada Towns With A Slower Pace Of Life


Genoa was a Mormon trading post in 1851, a decade before Nevada was a state, and it has never been in a hurry since. Up and down the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and out across the Great Basin, the towns that grew up around silver strikes, railroad water stops, and dam construction camps mostly emptied out when the work ran dry, and what stayed behind is a string of places where the clock loosened its grip. Opera houses still host the occasional show. Saloons still pour for whoever walks in. The eleven towns below trade Nevada’s neon for porch time, dark skies, and roads with almost nothing on them.

Genoa

Mormon Station State Historic Park in Genoa, Nevada. Image credit Ritu Manoj Jethani via Shutterstock

The Genoa Bar and Saloon has been pouring drinks since 1853, which makes it the oldest bar in the state, and most of its counter and fixtures date to the 1860s. That is the pace of the place in one building. Genoa itself is Nevada’s oldest permanent settlement, and Mormon Station State Historic Park preserves a reconstructed log trading post on the site of the original 1851 station, with a small museum and grounds that fill up for community events through the summer. Genoa Town Park carries the warm-month concert schedule. When the afternoon calls for it, David Walley’s Resort sits a short walk off, with mineral hot springs that have drawn soakers to this corner of the Carson Valley for well over a century.

Ely

Main Street in Ely, Nevada.
Main Street in Ely, Nevada.

At the Nevada Northern Railway Museum, the locomotives are not models behind glass; the collection is one of the most complete original short-line operations left in the country, and the steam excursions run on the same track the copper trains used. That is Ely’s main event, and it sets the tempo. The Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park, just outside town, preserves six beehive-shaped stone kilns that fed the smelters during the mining boom, close enough to reach for an afternoon. The White Pine Public Museum fills in the rest, with mining, ranching, and Native history. Back on Aultman Street, the Hotel Nevada and Gambling Hall has anchored downtown since it opened in 1929, when it was briefly the tallest building in the state, and it still pours a cold one for anyone coming in off Highway 50.

Tonopah

The Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah, Nevada.
The Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah, Nevada. Image credit Travelview via Shutterstock

On a clear, moonless night at the Clair Blackburn Memorial Stargazing Park, you can pick out more than 7,000 stars with your eyes alone. Most cities show you 25 or 50. The park, off Highway 95 with concrete pads laid out for telescopes, is reason enough to time a visit around the new moon. By day, the Tonopah Historic Mining Park spreads across 100 acres of the original silver works, with tunnels and headframes from the boom that built the town. The Mizpah Hotel, restored and operating since its 1907 opening, holds the Pittman Café for breakfast and the Jack Dempsey Room for a sit-down dinner, named for the heavyweight champion who once worked the hotel as a bouncer.

Virginia City

Aerial scenic view of the historic Main Street in downtown Virginia City, Nevada.
The historic Main Street in downtown Virginia City, Nevada.

The Comstock Lode silver strike of 1859 turned Virginia City into one of the richest mining centers in the West almost overnight, and the wooden boardwalks and stacked 19th-century storefronts climbing the hillside are what the money left behind. The Virginia and Truckee Railroad runs short excursions along the old mining route, and the Chollar Mine tour takes you underground into the works themselves. The Bucket of Blood Saloon has been serving since 1876, built on the footprint of an earlier saloon right after the Great Fire of 1875 cleared the block. It is an easy place to lose a slow afternoon over a beer.

Boulder City

Downtown streets of Boulder City, Nevada.
Downtown streets of Boulder City, Nevada. Image credit gg-foto via Shutterstock

Gambling is illegal here by city ordinance, one of only two Nevada towns where that is true, a rule that traces straight back to why the town exists. The federal government built Boulder City in the early 1930s to house the workers raising Hoover Dam, laying out organized streets and civic buildings, and the planned layout still shapes a walkable downtown. The dam itself draws most visitors, best taken in without rushing. The Boulder City-Hoover Dam Museum, inside the historic Boulder Dam Hotel, tells the Depression-era construction story, and the Coffee Cup Café is the institution where locals linger over breakfast. At Hemenway Park, desert bighorn sheep come down to graze against the backdrop of Lake Mead country.

Caliente

Downtown street in Caliente, Nevada.
Downtown street in Caliente, Nevada.

The Caliente Railroad Depot, a restored Mission Revival building from the Union Pacific era, now does double duty as the town’s visitor center and the anchor of its main street. The name comes from the hot springs that first drew settlers, and cottonwoods shade a town that sits well off the southern Nevada rush. Two miles south, Kershaw-Ryan State Park tucks shaded picnic areas, spring-fed wading pools, and trails beneath steep canyon walls. The Barnes Canyon trail network gives mountain bikers and hikers desert terrain to work through at their own speed, and Meadow Valley Wash supports cottonwood stands and wildlife unusual for country this dry.

Eureka

Aerial view of the tiny town of Eureka, Nevada on Highway 50.
Overlooking Eureka, Nevada, on Highway 50.

Sixteen smelters once belched enough smoke over Eureka to earn it the nickname “Pittsburgh of the West,” back when 9,000 people and a hundred-odd saloons crowded the canyon. About 600 people live here now, and the boom-era buildings have the streets mostly to themselves. The Eureka Opera House, built in 1880 on a block cleared by the previous year’s fire, still stages performances under its restored interior. The Eureka Sentinel Museum occupies the original 1879 newspaper building, presses and type cases left where they sat. The Jackson House Hotel has put up guests since the 19th century, and the Owl Club Bar and Steakhouse feeds travelers and locals along Highway 50, the stretch a magazine once branded the Loneliest Road in America.

Gardnerville

Overlooking Gardnerville, Nevada.
Overlooking Gardnerville, Nevada. Image credit G Chapel via Shutterstock

Basque sheepherders settled the Carson Valley, and their cooking is still the reason to plan dinner in Gardnerville, served family-style at long tables in the valley’s old boarding-house tradition. The town grew as a ranching center under the Sierra Nevada, and the Carson Valley Museum and Cultural Center, housed in a former high school, lays out that agricultural and pioneer history. Lampe Park gives the community its gathering ground, with a quiet stream and walking paths and a calendar of seasonal events. Jobs Peak rises over the whole valley, a granite wall that turns gold at the end of the day.

Wells

Looking out over the landscape in Wells, Nevada.
Landscape surrounding Wells, Nevada. Image credit Famartin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

The Angel Lake Scenic Byway climbs out of the desert flats into the East Humboldt Range, ending at a glacial lake cupped high against the peaks, good for a morning of fishing or a slow walk along the alpine shore. Wells grew up as a railroad town, and the Front Street Historic District still shows the bones of that era, when this was a working junction on the transcontinental line. The Trail of the 49ers Interpretive Center on 6th Street covers the emigrant routes that funneled through here on the way west, the California Trail travelers who passed through long before the rails did.

Winnemucca

Downtown street in Winnemucca, Nevada.
Downtown street in Winnemucca, Nevada.

The Humboldt River made Winnemucca a crossing long before the railroad came through, and the Humboldt Museum tells that regional story through Native, ranching, and transportation exhibits. The town’s other inheritance is Basque: sheepherders settled here in numbers, and the dining room at the Martin Hotel still serves the lamb and the family-style spread that the town celebrates each summer at its Basque Festival. The Winnemucca Sand Dunes draw the off-road and open-desert crowd just outside town. For something quieter, Water Canyon climbs along a running stream into terrain more rugged than the valley floor lets on.

Lovelock

Downtown Lovelock, Nevada.
Downtown Lovelock, Nevada. Image credit Ken Lund via Flickr

The Pershing County Courthouse is round, one of the few circular courthouses still in use anywhere in the country, and it sits at the center of town with its early-20th-century architecture intact. Behind it, Lovers Lock Plaza invites visitors to clip a padlock to a chain as a token of commitment, a small local tradition that has become the town’s signature stop. The deeper history is just outside town at Lovelock Cave, where excavations turned up evidence of human use going back thousands of years. Rye Patch State Recreation Area, along the reservoir on the Humboldt River, handles the boating, fishing, and lakeside afternoons.

Wide Open Spaces And Unhurried Places

What these towns share is not scenery so much as arithmetic: the work that built them mostly left, and the people who stayed kept the opera houses, the saloons, and the depots running at a fraction of the old traffic. That is why a steam train in Ely or a 7,000-star sky over Tonopah feels unhurried in a way a manufactured attraction never quite manages. The pace was not designed. It is what is left when the boom moves on and the place decides to stay anyway.

Advertisement



Source link

Continue Reading

New Mexico

First July 4 display at Miles park for 250th honors America and New Mexican identity

Published

on

First July 4 display at Miles park for 250th honors America and New Mexican identity


The City Different’s Fourth of July celebration began a little differently this year.

Instead of gathering near Santa Fe Place mall as residents have for years, thousands spread across Franklin E. Miles Park for the city’s first Independence Day celebration at the new venue. They came to watch a drone show debut, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding by blending American symbols with ones signifying New Mexican identity, followed by the traditional fireworks.

The move to Franklin E. Miles Park followed months of debate after the former venue became unavailable due to construction tied to a new hotel. And for some nearby residents, the change exceeded expectations.

Advertisement






070426 nb july 4th 02.JPG

Advertisement

Lewis and his son Aidan Herrera make their way in matching patriotic garb towards live music by Lumpy on Saturday, July 4, 2026, at Franklin E. Miles Park.



‘A learning curve’



Advertisement




070426 nb july 4th 03.JPG

Nathan Montoya, 3, catches a ride with Carlos Montoya while skateboarding at Franklin E. Miles Park during the Fourth of July celebration on Saturday.


Advertisement


‘Santa Fe should be proud’







070426 nb july 4th 04.JPG

Advertisement

Pop-its fireworks entertain children as they are thrown against the ground during July 4 celebrations Saturday at Franklin E. Miles Park.



‘We’re the City Different’



Advertisement




070426 nb july 4th 05.JPG

Lana Bolin of Lumpy serenades the crowd during Fourth of July celebrations Saturday at Franklin E. Miles Park.


Advertisement




Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending