Any chance for a late bill to double the ammunition magazine limit to 30 rounds this year appeared to disintegrate when GOP state Rep. Patrick Neville revealed Wednesday that 26 Republican legislators have signed a letter opposing the idea.

The letter to Independence Institute president Jon Caldara, who has championed the 30-round limit in a high-profile media campaign, urges him to advocate instead for a full repeal of the 15-round limit passed in 2013 with no Republican support.

“The government has no business telling the people how many rounds they need to defend themselves or their loved ones in a dangerous situation, whether it be 15, 30, or 100 rounds,” says the letter. “If we abandon our strong belief in the Constitution, we will lose the moral high ground and damage the reputation of our party. If we allow a compromise of our rights, a full repeal will never happen.”

Caldara said Wednesday that he had not yet received the letter, but agreed that it would be impossible to pass a 30-round limit this year with 26 Republicans in opposition. Supporters of the plan would need every House and Senate Republican behind it, plus a few House Democrats.

Still, he said, the idea has generated too much popular support among gun owners to be discarded.

“If there is no late bill, it certainly tees it up for next year, and this fight will have to happen then,” Caldara said. “It just hovers there for a year, until they come back and there’s plenty of time for a regular bill. This is not going away.”

Score this round for Rocky Mountain Gun Owners president Dudley Brown, who appears to have won the Great Firearms Battle of 2015 between himself and Caldara after a fierce three-week media duel over how best to combat the state’s 15-round magazine limit.

Brown insists that a 30-round limit would undercut the fight to repeal the 2013 law, better known as the “mag ban,” even as Caldara argues that doubling the legal magazine capacity would eliminate 99 percent of the problem surrounding the law.

Caldara notes that most best-selling pistols and rifles, including the AR-15, are designed for magazines that fall between 15 and 30 rounds, while Brown counters that agreeing to any limit, even 31 rounds, means conceding that the government may infringe upon Second Amendment rights.

“I don’t want to be in the business of limiting rounds at all,” said Neville. “It’s not the government’s place or their business. We shouldn’t be doing this.”

He said among those who helped him gather signatures for the letter were Republican state Reps. Steve Humphrey and Lori Saine, as well as his father, state Sen. Tim Neville. After sending the letter, one more Republican came out in support, bringing the total to 27.

Senate President Bill Cadman has said nothing yet as to whether he plans to drop a late bill, but Neville said that, “I don’t think it would be the smart move.”

“Again, it distracts from the argument, and there’s an argument to be made, that if there was any sort of compromise here, if we give in to the fact that we are in support of limiting rounds, then you lose ground and you’ll never have a chance for a repeal,” Neville said.

The fireworks began earlier this month after Democratic state Rep. Joe Salazar floated the idea of doubling the limit. Salazar is no ordinary Democrat: He serves as vice chairman of the Veterans, Military and State Affairs Committee, where every one of this year’s gun-rights bills went to die, including a mag-ban repeal.

With Salazar’s support, however, a 30-round magazine limit bill would presumably make it out of committee and onto the House floor, where supporters say there are enough pro-gun Democrats willing to cross party lines to pass it. Those at the Independence Institute quickly embraced the idea.

“With a Republican-controlled state Senate, all you need to do is have a late bill that says, ‘Let’s decriminalize, let’s relegalize magazines up to 30 rounds,’ and we can liberate and bring relief to gun owners like me and gun shops and people who want to transfer them,” Caldara said as guest host last week of the Michael Brown Show on KHOW-AM. “It’s a huge step forward.”

But Brown argued that a 30-round bill would do two things that gun owners don’t want: It would take the legs out from under the ongoing campaign to repeal the 15-round limit, and it would give political cover to Salazar, a gun-control supporter who was very nearly toppled in November by a little-known Republican.

“There are not the votes for the repeal and there are not the votes to pass a 31-round ban, either,” Brown said on the Mandy Connell Show on KHOW-AM. “Because principled conservatives will not vote for that. And left-wing Democrats won’t vote for that either because they don’t want to remove the ban on 30-round magazines.”

The debate quickly turned personal as Caldara accused Brown of trying to hold up a 30-round limit in order to keep his supporters whipped up in a frenzy over Democratic gun-grabbers in order to juice fundraising.

At one point, Caldara lieutenant David Kopel, a Second Amendment legal expert who filed a lawsuit against the mag ban, called Brown a “liar, a huckster and a hoax,” while Brown dubbed his foes “surrender monkeys.”

Caldara said Wednesday that at least one state legislator has agreed to sponsor a 30-round limit. If such a bill is proposed in 2016, it would put the RMGO in the untenable position of having to come out against legislation to raise the magazine limit, he said.

“Now that Salazar is on record as saying yes to 30 rounds, the only way 30 rounds doesn’t pass that committee is because of RMGO,” Caldara said.

“What they seem to be really scared of is the potential of a recorded vote on relegalizing 30-round magazines, because if that’s the case, RMGO guys have to choose between gun owners and Dudley,” said Caldara. “And if they choose Dudley, then pardon the pun, there’s the smoking gun that Dudley does not want to expand gun rights.”

Neville said that Salazar’s support for a 30-round bill is far from a sure thing.

“When Joe Salazar made his comment specifically about Senate Bill 175, which is a full repeal, he didn’t say that he would support anything. He just said he would be willing to sit down and talk with the sponsors of 175 about a compromise,” said Neville. “He didn’t commit to anything.”

Supporters of the 30-round proposal say the problem is Republican legislators don’t want to cross the RMGO, which has a track record of spending heavily in GOP primaries to oust candidates seen as insufficiently pro-gun.

With that in mind, the Independence Institute launched last week a campaign called “We Have Your Back,” which has 1,670 followers on Facebook, aimed at assuring Republican legislators that they won’t be left to twist in the wind come primary season if they vote for a 30-round limit.

“We pledge to our courageous state legislators that we will have your back should political bully Dudley Brown and Rocky Mountain Gun Owners make the false claim that you don’t support the Second Amendment,” says the Facebook page. “Don’t be afraid to do the right thing.”

The campaign has drawn the support of some high-profile Republicans and gun-rights advocates, including former Gov. Bill Owens, ex-Reps. Tom Tancredo and Bob Beauprez, Pueblo recall organizer Victor Head, Steve Schreiner of the Colorado Firearms Coalition, I Am Created Equal’s Laura Carno, and former state Republican Party chair Dick Wadhams, according to the Facebook page.

The conservative Colorado Springs Gazette slammed the RMGO in an April 14 editorial for its opposition to the 30-round limit, saying the group “clings to unattainable aspirations of all-or-nothing victories.”

“I suppose it’s a compromise, but so what?” Tancredo said on KHOW-AM. “Is it moving in the right direction? Yes. Does it mean you can’t move the next day? No. So what the heck?”

Brown points out that his RMGO PAC fundraising goes to elect pro-gun candidates, while the Independence Institute is a 501(c)3 and cannot back candidates. Those behind the “We Have Your Back” campaign have political motivations of their own, say critics, such as seeking revenge for past primary squabbles involving the RMGO.

“Amusing things: prominent GOPers who ‘have your back’ against @RMGunOwners overlap remarkably with Lang Sias primary supporters,” said Missing Pundit in a Twitter post.

Still, Colorado gun owners laboring under the 15-round limit can’t be blamed for wanting access to larger magazines now, instead of waiting for a repeal that may never happen. Not a problem, says Brown.

Most county sheriffs have made it abundantly clear that they oppose the 15-round limit, calling it unenforceable, which means it’s unlikely they’ll be snaring unsuspecting magazine-buyers in a sting operation any time soon, he says.

“To those people who say, ‘Wait a minute, I want to be able to buy my 30-round magazine,’ I say, ‘Shut your pie hole and go buy one.’ There are many retailers who sell them right now. They ignore the law,” Brown said on KHOW-AM. “And God bless them for doing so. And in many cases, your district attorney and your sheriff won’t be involved in any cases against you, anyway.”

Carno blasted back with an April 28 post entitled, “No, I Will Not Shut My Pie Hole!”

“While there may be civil disobedience in buying illegal magazines and Sheriffs who say they are not complying with the law, that is not a plan,” she said. “The Sheriffs’ tenure is not eternal, and someone who doesn’t see things the same way may replace them.”

Carno added that the real issue is safety, not who controls the state legislature. “It’s not about politics. It’s about the life and safety of people who need to defend themselves today,” she said.

Al Maurer, founder of The Voice of Liberty, isn’t a Dudley Brown fan – he calls him “rude and crude, a bully who hammers everyone who disagrees with him” – but on this point he sides with RMGO, saying, “There is no duty to obey an unconstitutional law.”

Maurer isn’t the first to point out that nobody has enjoyed the internecine dogfight more than Colorado Democrats.

“One can imagine Rep. Salazar sitting back,” Maurer added, “and watching with delight as conservatives tear each other apart.”

– Twitter @ValRichardson17