Lawsuit Challenging Passage Of CO's Red Flag Bill Dismissed

Red flag laws are a million kinds of problematic. They permit people to be stripped of their Second Amendment rights without due process, with no opportunity to defend themselves until after the fact and can be predicated on shaky evidence at best.

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Colorado’s, for example, was nearly used to strip the gun rights from a law enforcement officer. He’d shot a man sometime before in what looks like a case of suicide by cop, so the deceased’s mother tried to get his gun rights stripped.

Yet there appeared to have been some shenanigans in the passage of that state’s red flag law.

Unfortunately, a district court dismissed the case challenging the law’s passage.

 lawsuit against how Colorado’s red flag law was passed has been dismissed by a Denver District Court, according to documents obtained Tuesday by 9NEWS.

The lawsuit was filed against Gov. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) by the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, State Rep. Patrick Neville (R-Castle Rock), Rep. Lori Saine (R-Firestone), and Rep. Dave Williams (R-Colorado Springs).

It alleged that Colorado Democrats acted illegally and unconstitutionally to move the gun control measure through the legislature. Essentially, House Republicans claim they asked for the bill to be read at length but Democrats initially refused the request. When they compiled, multiple people read the text aloud at once.

In his ruling, Colorado District Court Judge Eric Johnson dismissed the lawsuit, saying that it was because it didn’t deal with the law itself, but rather how it was passed in the legislature .

Of course, this is just the opening salvo in this battle and I don’t think anyone rightly expected this issue to be settled in district court. Had the judge found for the plaintiffs, then the defendants would have appealed. Instead, it’s the other way around.

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It should also be noted that this isn’t a challenge against the law itself, but about how the law was passed. Should this continue up the chain and the RMGO and company still get shot down, then you can come back and challenge the law itself in a completely different lawsuit.

In other words, it looks like the folks in Colorado are trying everything they can to get this horrible law overturned.

How successful will they be? I honestly couldn’t speculate. The antics of the Democrat were out of line, that much is certain, and my hope is that they do come out victorious on this measure. The truth is, if they felt they had all they needed to pass this bill without any repercussions, they wouldn’t have stooped to this kind of level to get the law passed in the first place.

That doesn’t mean the courts will see it that way, though, so we’ll need to watch as this case proceeds onward through the system. I suspect this one will end up before the Colorado State Supreme Court before it’s all said and done. What happens at that point is really a matter of conjecture well beyond my ability to speculate.

Here’s hoping it goes for the good guys.

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