Residents Stand Tall Against Big Government, Refuse To Bow Down to City's 2nd Amendment Demands
Having been unsuccessful at pushing through strict gun control legislation at the federal level over the past several years, many anti-gun liberals shifted their focus to the state and local level to implement their authoritarian infringements of the Second Amendment across the country.
Unfortunately for the anti-gun crowd, while they can pass all of the gun control laws they desire, those laws are essentially meaningless if the general population refuse to comply with the regulations, and many gun owners have adopted a stance of noncompliance in some places — such as Boulder, Colorado, where it is most likely gun-owning liberals who are refusing to comply with the gun control scheme imposed by their fellow Democrats in the progressive city.
‘Gun-toting hippies’ greet Boulder ‘assault weapons’ ban with mass noncompliancehttps://t.co/pJFuFHYktG pic.twitter.com/Y6BHj9wcC2
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) January 7, 2019
The Washington Times reported that the Boulder City Council passed a local ordinance shortly after the tragic Parkland, Florida, high school mass shooting in February 2018 that banned the possession and sale of so-called “assault weapons” within the city’s jurisdiction.
Of course, the council broadly defined “assault weapons” as being any semi-automatic rifle, shotgun or handgun that included any additional features like pistol grips, adjustable or folding stocks or detachable magazines.
A “grandfather clause” was added into the ordinance that allowed residents to keep now-banned firearms that were already in their possession prior to the passage of the ordinance, provided those residents applied for a special certificate with the Boulder Police Department that required a $20 fee, federal background check and firearms inspection.
A deadline to certify any and all “assault weapons” was set for Dec. 31, but that date came and went with minimal compliance from residents, and the police reported that only 342 “assault weapons” had been properly certified prior to that deadline. Violation of that deadline and the ordinance carries a fine up to $1,000 and up to 90 days in jail.
The executive director of a pro-Second Amendment group in Colorado known as Rally for Our Rights, Lesley Hollywood, told The Washington Times, “I would say the majority of people I’ve talked to just aren’t complying because most people see this as a registry.” She added, “Boulder actually has a very strong firearms community.”
Hollywood said, “The firearms community in Boulder — they may be Democrats, but they love their firearms.” She recalled a rally in April ahead of the council’s vote when some 500 gun owners turned out to protest the ordinance.
“That was a neat protest because it really brought out people from Boulder,” Hollywood said. “People you would never expect to be gun owners were standing there, the gun-toting hippies, basically, saying, ‘Why are you guys doing this to us? We didn’t do anything wrong, and now you’re coming after us.’”
While most of Boulder’s gun owners have quietly engaged in noncompliance with the gun control law, there are a few who have boldly gone public with their civil disobedience against the infringement, such as Jon Caldara, a free market advocate who hosts a public-access TV program and columnist for The Denver Post.
“The question was, do I do this publicly or do it privately, and I’ve chosen to do it publicly because somebody has to,” Caldara told The Washington Times. “There will be thousands of people in Boulder living in the shadows, worried about somebody turning them in.”
It was the liberal hypocrisy with regard to “tolerance” that served as the final straw for Caldara and compelled his non-compliance. He explained, “In this town that spouts tolerance for alternative lifestyles, that actually puts posters all over its buildings and schools about it, when it comes to a lifestyle they don’t like, there is no tolerance. So for me, this all works around the word tolerance. And tolerance means tolerating things you dislike, that you find scary.”
However, despite his defiant stance, Caldara is worried that he could eventually face consequences for his bold noncompliance. “I don’t like this at all,” he said. “I’m scared. I do not want to go to jail. I don’t want them to confiscate my guns. I’m scared sh–less about what’s going to happen to my kids. The idea of my son being without his dad for three months is awful. I just want some damn consistency.”
City Attorney Tom Carr admitted that enforcement of the ordinance would be difficult and he promised that there would be no “door-to-door” confiscation efforts.
Hollywood noted that most gun owners possess multiple firearms, and the few individuals she spoke with who actually certified their guns had registered multiple weapons at a time, meaning the 342 certified firearms quite possibly are owned by only a relative handful of compliant gun owners, possibly as few as 20 to 50 people total, in her estimation.
This is how gun owners and Second Amendment supporters should respond to attacks on their Constitutional rights, with noncompliance and a refusal to submit to the tyrannical dictates of would-be authoritarians that prefer a compliant and disarmed populace that is much easier to control.
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