Colorado Politics

Fenberg says gun legislation to be unveiled as soon as this week

The state legislative response to the mass shooting in Boulder last month could be unveiled as soon as this week, according to Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg.

“There’s been a lot of movement, a lot of discussions,” the Boulder Democrat said during a media availability Tuesday morning. “I’ve been meeting with just about every single one of my members of my caucus in one way or another to talk about where the support is and what people want to do.”

Fenberg said he was confident there would be more gun-related legislation in the General Assembly this legislative session, with some measures “hopefully” rolled out this week.

“I don’t know that we’ll introduce (gun legislation) this week, it’ll either be this week or next – that’s probably the timeline we’re looking at,” he said. “But I’m hoping this week we’ll start being able to sort of publicly discuss what’s going to be in these bills that will be introduced.”

Fenberg declined to detail the specifics of those proposals, indicating it would be “counterproductive for me to publicly talk about some of the pieces that I’m still trying to count votes on.” But in broad strokes, he indicated he wanted to “make sure that people that have a violent past don’t have easy access to weapons to do the type of tragedies that we saw in Boulder.”

In the aftermath of that mass shooting, Fenberg said he would support an assault weapons ban but questioned how effective it would be solely at the state level.

The comments come on the heels of Gov. Jared Polis on Monday signing two gun-related bills into law. One of those, House Bill 1106, requires safe storage of guns; and the second, Senate Bill 78, requires firearms owners to report when their weapons are lost or stolen within five days.

Both bills were filibustered by House Republicans and passed without a single Republican vote in either chamber.

Sen. Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder, speaks about Boulder Police Officer Eric Talley, who died in the March 22 shooting at the south Boulder King Soopers on the Senate floor on March 23, 2021. 
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