In his State of the Union Address, President Biden signaled his support for a nationwide ban on “assault weapons” by calling on Congress to pass one.

We, the Colorado State Shooting Association (the official state association of the NRA) are currently fighting to defeat a similar statewide proposal – House Bill 24-1292 – sponsored by two of the anti-gun majority’s most radical leftists: Reps. Elisabeth Epps and Tim Hernandez.

If our home state’s proposal is any clue, President Biden meant to say that he wants to outlaw the manufacture, sale, and transfer of every semi-automatic centerfire shotgun, rifle, and handgun that accepts a magazine.

Of course, such a policy would be a clear violation of the Second Amendment which says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

It also wouldn’t come close to meeting the standard of constitutional muster established in the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling which determined that gun laws must be consistent with the Second Amendment’s plain text, and the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining why banning all of the most common firearms used for self-defense is inconsistent with the Second Amendment’s plain text. I will simply dig right into the second piece of the Bruen ruling’s standard – our national tradition of firearm regulation.

Although there has been a temporary “assault weapons ban” in the past, there has never been a national ban on a category of firearms as broad as what politicians in Biden’s party are now calling “assault weapons.” A majority of the firearms Americans have used legally for decades would fall under their new description.

But it’s no surprise that an angry old tyrant like Joe Biden would push for such a flagrant violation of our rights. He does have a habit of wielding the power of federal agencies to bypass constitutional procedures. He also loves to legislate by executive order. Therefore, It would be silly to expect him to abide by the law. That’s why we should take his rhetoric seriously despite having the law so clearly on our side.

As my colleague John Seville so eloquently articulated in a recent article, banning the legal manufacture, sale, and transfer of firearms will simply ensure that criminals are the only ones manufacturing, selling, and transferring those weapons.

Pretending for a moment that there should be any gun-control policies at all (shall not be infringed is pretty clear), such policies would only have any semblance of reasonableness if they managed to enable law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights while keeping guns away from criminals. An “assault weapons” ban would have precisely the opposite effect, handing black-market arms dealers a monopoly on those weapons.

The only plausible outcome is a horde of armed criminals who are confident their victims are unlikely equipped to fight back. We cannot allow that to happen in Colorado or across the nation. Defeating House Bill 24-1292 is the first step toward ensuring it doesn’t.

If we can defeat an “assault weapons” ban for a second year in a row in a state whose politics are dominated by anti-gunners, the rest of the nation and all of their political representatives will be forced to face the reality that these gun grabs are a losing issue.

We are never going to change the anti-gunners’ perspectives. Nevertheless, they are politicians who will vote for their self-interest. Even if they believe in banning guns, we can force a “no” vote by making it clear that their political careers depend on it.

That’s exactly how we defeated last year’s gun ban, and by doing it again this year, we will make a significant contribution to making a national ban unpalatable.

Therefore, the Colorado State Shooting Association will continue our fight to defeat the Colorado “assault weapons” ban in the legislature. If it does become law, we will explore every legal avenue to overturn it.

We will never bend our knee to politicians like Tim Hernandez, Elisabeth Epps, or Joe Biden. We hope you won’t either.

Garrett Flicker is the former chairman of the Denver Republican Party and the director of communications for the Colorado State Shooting Association (the NRA’s official state association). Learn more at CSSA.ORG/CO