While Senate Republicans this week celebrated bipartisan support for a bill repealing a 2013 law limiting the size of ammunition magazines, Governor Hickenlooper hinted a veto may be in the cards, should the bill reach his desk.

Senate Republicans announced Monday that four Democrats signed on as sponsors of Senate Bill 15-175: Sens. Cheri Jahn, D-Wheat Ridge; Kerry Donovan, D-Vail; Leroy Garcia, D-Pueblo; and Rep. Ed Vigil, D-Alamosa. Garcia and Vigil, both members of the House in 2013 when the original magazine limit bill was passed, voted against the legislation (HB 13-1224), as did Sen. Jahn. Donovan, elected to the Senate last November to replace term-limited Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, won her seat by 1,300 votes, just over 2 percent ahead of her Republican opponent, Don Suppes.

SB 175 passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday on a party-line vote, after a four-hour hearing, far shorter than the committee’s chair anticipated.

The turnout for Monday’s hearing was considerably less than expected. The bill was originally scheduled for February 23, but a snowstorm closed the Capitol that day. About 75 people had signed up to testify from two remote locations, in Grand Junction and Otero County.

No one showed up at Otero Junior College on Monday to testify on the bill; at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, only nine out of 32 signed up to testify showed. Eight of the nine testified against the bill.

At the Capitol, the hearing, held in the Capitol’s largest committee room which seats 260, was less than a third full. One of the bill’s most ardent supporters, Dudley Brown of the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, sent an email out to supporters on Monday asking for donations for a new national organization that would fight gun control laws at the federal level. SB 175 was not mentioned.

A little more than two dozen supporters signed up to testify on Monday, countered by 17 who testified against. The bill is sponsored by former Weld County sheriff, now Sen. John Cooke, R-Greeley, and Sen. Chris Holbert, R-Parker.

The bill is expected to pass the Senate, especially considering the three votes from Democrat Senators who have already pledged to support it. How it will fare in the House is another matter. Republicans said this week that the bill would pass the House if it got to the House floor, but that’s far from a given.

House Republicans have already attempted a repeal of the magazine limit law, through HB 15-1009. But the bill was assigned to the so-called “kill committee,” the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, and died on a party-line vote on February 2. Vigil is not a member of that committee.

The governor, who signed the 2013 legislation, said Wednesday that despite questions about how to enforce the law, it does make Coloradans safer. Hickenlooper told reporters that his staff could not find a single example of someone defending home or property where the person used more than 15 rounds. “It’s not something people need for public safety,” he said. Hickenlooper added that in 30 to 40 percent of the instances where a police officer died in the line of duty, that officer had been killed with a weapon with a magazine with more than 15 rounds. In 32 of the 41 mass shootings that have taken place in the last 30 years, the shooter(s) had magazines with more than 15 rounds. “We’re not trying to take guns away,” Hickenlooper said.

“I would have real misgivings about signing something” that will make Colorado less safe “and doesn’t provide additional Second Amendment or [other] protections for individual citizens,” he said.

— Marianne@coloradostatesman.com