Ordinance 2022-1831 - Laserfiche WebLink

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WHEREAS, high -capacity "tactical" or "combat" shotguns are assault weapons modeled after firearms originally used for riot control by foreign law enforcement. After the Armsel Striker, popular in South Africa and marketed in the U.S. as the Street Sweeper, was designated a "destructive device" under the National Firearms Act, gunmakers designed workaround weapons as powerful as the Street Sweeper that inflict catastrophic injuries by rapidly firing a dozen or more shotgun slugs. These weapons are unfit for lawful sporting or self-defense uses; and WHEREAS, at the 2017 Mandalay Bay shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, the shooter modified semiautomatic assault rifles with bump stocks so they could fire at speeds approaching fully automatic machine guns. Bump stocks, as well as binary triggers, burst triggers, rotating trigger cranks, and other after -market rapid-fire trigger activators enable firing many rounds per second and serve no lawful self-defense function; and WHEREAS, several years after the Las Vegas shooting drew attention to the dangers of bump stocks that give shooters automatic firepower, the ATF adopted a federal rule effectively banning their possession. However, legal challenges to the federal bump stock rule are still pending and state and local action is needed to restrict other rapid-fire trigger activators; and WHEREAS, large -capacity magazines are ammunition feeding devices that hold more than 10 rounds and may hold as many as 100 rounds of ammunition. Mass shootings that involve large -capacity magazines result in nearly five times as many people shot compared to mass shootings that do not involve high capacity magazines. These magazines increase the number of victims injured and killed by enabling shooters to fire more rounds before reloading —a critical moment when many criminal shooters are stopped before they can further increase their death tolls; and WHEREAS, large -capacity magazines also make gun violence far more lethal in situations other than mass shootings, including interpersonal gun violence and shootings by organized crime or street groups. Firearms equipped with large -capacity magazines account for 22 to 36% of crime guns in most places, and research shows upwards of 40% of crime guns used in serious violent crimes, including murders of police officers, are equipped with large -capacity magazines; and WHEREAS, City Council is unaware of any reported incidents where someone engaged in self-defense fired more than 10 rounds of a large -capacity magazine to fend off an attack. Despite analyzing several decades of evidence about defensive shootings, gun -rights groups raising legal challenges to magazine restrictions in other jurisdictions have been unable to identify a single incident anywhere in the nation during which someone needed to fire more than ten rounds at once in lawful self-defense. Conversely, numerous high -profile mass shootings nationally and within Colorado have been carried out with LCMs, including the King Soopers shooting and the Aurora movie theater shooting. Nationally, the five deadliest mass shootings of the last decade all involved the use of LCMs holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition; and WHEREAS, in 1994, a federal ban on the manufacture, transfer, and possession of assault weapons and the transfer and possession of large -capacity magazines was enacted. The Ordinance No. 1831 Series 2022 Page 3 of 12