When it comes to gun legislation, liberals keep shooting themselves in the foot. 

Each year, leftists in the Colorado legislature get out a bucket of deep-blue paint and, broad brushes in hand, paint themselves into untenable corners on a wide range of issues. As they search for a way out, they often default to turning dumb legislation into meaningless, unreadable — and unread — studies.

Or they tack on amendments that end up creating needless work and cost for hard-working Coloradans, just so they get a talking point for their constituent newsletters. 

The latest example is their shambolic attempt to ban a wide range of semiautomatic weapons. The target this year in the left’s annual war on non-criminals are rifles and certain handguns with detachable magazines. Advocates argue that banning these firearms — mostly rifles — complicates the ability of mass shooters to reload. 

Rule one is to clear the holster before you fire the gun. 

The more the flawed bill was considered in public, the weaker its support became. It was losing the support of Democrats from rural areas — and Gov. Jared Polis. The outcry from grassroots Coloradans opposing the bill was massive and sustained. 

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So having placed themselves in a corner with no easy exits, they sawed a hole in the floor. That’s when the silliness started.

A late-night amendment created a bill more shot through with holes than a row of soup cans at an outdoor gun range. 

After hours of overheated rhetoric about preventing carnage and stopping people from owning “weapons of war,” you now would be free to buy one — if you jump through the leftist’s harassing array of hoops. 

Under the bill, law-abiding Coloradans who probably have forgotten more about gun safety than legislative liberals will ever know, would have to pay for and attend upward of 12 hours of safety instruction — and score a 90 on a final exam. 

And, most hilariously, the anti-gun liberals would subject people to a mandatory safety update after five years.

“Well, Bob, we just want to update you that squeezing off rounds in your cul de sac to shut up your neighbor’s barking dog is still illegal.” 

It’s often said it is impolite to question the motives of people carrying legislation. But in this case, that’s the only way to understand this useless mess of a bill. 

Advocates can no longer claim the measure is about is stopping, or shortening the duration of, mass shootings — even if such a proposal could actually do so. Worse, the bill has never been about addressing Colorado’s sky-high rates of violent crime among America’s top-10. This is now solely about finding new ways to needlessly harass and financially burden law-abiding Coloradans who want to exercise their Second Amendment rights.    

The only thing the proponents of this bill like and understand less than firearms are the people who own them. 

Anti-gun leftists don’t understand the need for semi-automatic rifles on rural farms and ranches. They likely know few, if any, hunters or target shooters. They have never seen how seriously gun owners take safety, and training. And they think people learning how to responsibly have a firearm in their home — or on their hip — for personal protection are, frankly, nuts. 

They believe they have scored a great win for crime fighting by preventing a grandfather from gifting a rifle to a grandchild while he is still alive. 

So because they keep failing at banning guns, much less repealing the Second Amendment, their motivation is to find ways to incrementally make it too expensive, too time consuming, and too bureaucratically frustrating to obtain firearms and ammunition. Their hope is, over time, more and more people just find the burden too heavy and therefore they won’t — or can’t — buy a gun. 

What will likely pass will be a measure devoid of anything good for Colorado. It will, however, cost people who would never commit a crime, and might step in to prevent one, time and money simply to wade through red tape to exercise a right placed into the Constitution 234 years ago. 

To quote the great philosopher Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens and longtime communications and media relations strategist, is senior vice president, communications at the Daniels Fund in Denver. The views he expresses are his own.