EDITORIAL: Colorado lawmakers eye a backdoor gun tax

The latest attempt by ruling Democrats at the Legislature to curb Colorado gun owners comes with crocodile tears. It’s a bill requiring liability insurance for law-abiding citizens exercising their right to keep arms. HB24-1270’s mandate applies even if firearms are under lock and key in the safety of one’s home — and even if kept to protect that home.

Gun owners who fail to buy extra coverage face a $500 fine for the first offense and $1,000 the second time.

That’s right, the same “justice reform”-obsessed lawmakers who had to be publicly shamed into cracking down on auto theft last year after previously reducing it to a misdemeanor — have no problem socking it to lawful gun owners.

And the crocodile tears? They’re shed for gun owners of modest means. According to the bill’s official summary, it “permits a person who was denied firearm liability insurance by 2 or more insurers or a person who is indigent and cannot afford the insurance to petition a court for an order declaring that the person is excused from the firearm liability insurance requirement.”

You can plead poverty, but you have to go to court first. How considerate of the authors.

There’s something about the bill that isn’t necessarily apparent from reading its text: It’s a retread. Like a local bar band covering a pop tune, Colorado’s Legislature is just recycling a proposal shopped around in state after state by national gun-control groups.

Last year, it was taken up by legislatures in California and New York. This year, it’s making the rounds in statehouses from Washington to Maryland.

It wouldn’t be far-fetched to suppose HB24-1270’s sponsors — state Reps. Steven Woodrow, D-Denver, and Iman Jodeh, D-Aurora, and state Sen. Chris Hansen, D-Denver — didn’t even bother to read their bill. They knew it was being vetted by other left-leaning legislatures.

Yes, unfortunately, our Legislature really does work that way at times.

Wherever it’s implemented, this copycat measure has a ginned-up premise to begin with. It seeks to solve a nonexistent problem — uncompensated damages incurred by firearms — as a cover for its true aim of creating another hurdle to legal gun ownership.

In other words, it’s gun control by another name. It also amounts to a gun tax (as well as a boon to the insurance industry).

And yet, like so many overreaching gun-control policies, it will have no real impact in reducing violence involving guns. It’s driven by dogma, not data.

Perhaps none of this should surprise Coloradans at this point given the growing voice of the ruling party’s radical fringe at the Capitol. But the optics are still problematic for the Democratic Party in live-and-let-live Colorado with its big plurality of unaffiliated voters. It’s problematic, as well, for a governor said to have his eye on the White House.

Much of Middle America lies somewhat to the right of Colorado. Gov. Jared Polis knows that and, last year, signaled his opposition to a ban on semi-automatic weapons that ultimately failed in the Legislature.

It seems Polis doesn’t want to go too far on gun control. He also claims to be against tax hikes (more or less). This bill does both.

Perhaps Polis will make his displeasure known — if not publicly, then privately, to his fellow Democrats on the second floor at the Capitol. If they don’t kill it, he should veto it.

It would head off a new tax on the estimated 2.5 million Coloradans who keep guns at home — and safeguard his aspirations to higher office.