Monday was another gun-policy day at the Colorado Capitol. At the center of a second-reading back-and-forth in the state Senate, U.S. Senate candidate Tim Neville, R-Littleton, defended his proposal to lift the requirement that Coloradans who wish to carry concealed firearms apply for a permit and take training classes.

“Coloradans shouldn’t have to go begging to the government to exercise their God-given unalienable Second Amendment right,” Neville argued.

His bill passed the Senate Tuesday morning on a party-line 17-18 vote and now heads to the House where Democrats are sure to defeat it.

Public safety

In debate Monday, Neville said his bill, SB16-17, aimed to make it easier for Coloradans to protect themselves, pitching the proposal as a public safety measure and recounting the fact that his son, Rep. Patrick Neville, R-Castle Rock, was a student at Columbine High School in 1999 when it was the site of perhaps the most notorious school shooting in the nation’s history. If people other than the murderers at the school had been armed, Neville argued, the results may have been very different that day.

Neville’s bill is one of a suite of proposals Republicans have introduced each of the last three years — part of an effort that seeks, on the one hand, to expand gun rights outright in the state and, on the other, to repeal gun safety laws passed by Democrats, and mainly bills passed in 2013 in response to the Aurora Theater and Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.

More than perhaps ever before gun rights, in Colorado as across the country, have become a main issue through which Republican party candidates identify the party brand and energize supporters.

Senate Democrats opposed to Neville’s bill argued that, if safety were the goal, why attempt to loosen the gun training and application restrictions — on substance abusers and violent offenders, for example — that are part of the state’s concealed carry permit process.

Sen. Matt Jones, D-Louisville, proposed an amendment to the bill that would have required training for everyone who would carry a concealed firearm in the state and another that would have made them liable for any injury tied to their concealed guns.

“If you think (this bill is about) being safer, then vote for this (amendment),” Jones said.

Sen. Andy Kerr, D-Lakewood, proposed an amendment that would have banned concealed firearms from school grounds and another that would have asked voters to directly weigh whether or not the state should retain concealed carry permits.

The Senate Republican majority voted down all of the amendments.

Still debating gun policy, but maybe that’s a big change

This is “pretty predictable” gun politics, Kerr told The Colorado Statesman after the vote. “This was nothing new or amazing. I know the vast majority of Coloradans support a commonsense approach (to gun laws). I’ve had many constituents reach out and ask me to vote against this bill.”

Kerr said the arguments around gun laws that have echoed in the Capitol chambers the last few years may continue for decades.

But Erin DaCosta, a Colorado leader of the national gun safety group Moms Demand Action, said she thinks the conversation around gun policy is already changing in significant ways.

“Elected officials are listening,” she said. “Look, we have six states that went to universal background checks after Sandy Hook, and (Colorado) was the first … You’re going to see these accumulate, states passing gun-sense laws, because we are loud and we’re showing up.”

DaCosta’s group happened to be holding its “lobby day” Monday, and more than 50 members from across the state roamed the halls of the Capitol, watching chamber debates and visiting with their representatives.

“They’re listening to us,” DaCosta said, “candidates on the campaign trail, too. (Gun policy) is not the ‘third rail’ of politics anymore,” she said, referring to the idea that, like an electric subway rail, the topic was deadly to the touch.

“We’re reducing the stigma,” she said. “We’re not partisan, so we’re out there with every candidate, asking them to talk about this — and both sides are talking about it and campaigning on it. So, ‘third rail’? I don’t think so. I think people are talking about this in a way that never has been touched before.”

With reporting by John Tomasic.

— kara@coloradostatesman.com