Less than two weeks before
the latest mass shooting at
a Soopers grocery store in Boulder,
Colorado, a court struck down
an attempt by the city of Boulder
to ban assault weapons.
Now, this is being cited as one of
the potential causes for
why mass shootings like this can
take place in Boulder.
But I actually disagree.
Now, the Boulder City Council did
vote unanimously in May of 2018 to
pass a ban on the sale of assault
weapons and
high-capacity magazines.
But on March 12th,
Boulder County District Court Judge
Andrew Hartman ruled that the city
couldn't enforce the ban because
Colorado state law preempted
the city's ordinance.
His decision said this, he writes
that the Court has determined that
only Colorado state or federal law
can prohibit the possession, sale
and transfer of assault weapons and
large-capacity magazines.
I would argue that even Colorado
passing stricter gun legislation
doesn't go far enough.
This is an issue that needs to be
tackled by the federal government.
Because we don't have state borders
that are reinforced with walls and
border agents.
We're one country, guys.
Can we stop pretending as if we can
just pass laws in certain places in
the country and
then create this safe bubble?
That doesn't exist.
You can just travel
across state lines.
You can travel from one city to
the next. You can travel from
one city that has lax gun laws to
the other city that does not have
lax gun laws, and open fire if you
want to do a mass shooting, right?
We live in one country.
We need leadership from the federal
government.
Yes, Congress is full of feckless
losers who do nothing for us.
Yes, we have a huge problem with
the broken federal
government, okay?
We need to have real discussions
about doing something about that.
About holding lawmakers' feet to
the fire, about not immediately
liking and retweeting ridiculous
like, woo, I'm a big boy.
Look at these strong tweets I'm
putting out there.
No, I don't want to read your damn
tweets. And stop re-tweeting them.
Stop giving them brownie points for
their stupid tweets, okay?
We need the federal government
to do something about this.
Boulder passing strict gun laws
doesn't save anyone's life,
in my opinion, okay?
Because Boulder is not an island.
California is not an island.
New York's not an island.
Any other place in the country that
wants to pass strict
gun legislation, not an island.
We're one country.
So we need to do something on
a federal level.
I mean, that's my take on it.
>> Yeah, that's tough to follow.
[LAUGH] That's tough to follow.
Yeah, I agree.
And I think there are just some
common sense laws that can be
passed, right?
You talk about the universal
background checks.
[LAUGH] I would like to see people
that, you beat your wife,
you can't own a gun anymore.
You know what I'm saying?
Just think about what we do to
people, man, that keep them out of
employment, things that can
actually save their livelihood.
We tell them,
yo, you smoked weed one time, yo,
you went to prison one time.
And we just say, yeah, we're
shutting you out of a means to
support yourself, essentially for
the rest of your life.
We ruin people's lives with stuff
for as small as weed possession or
sales.
Yet somebody could just do
whatever, whenever they want and
still get to possess
a freaking gun.
It doesn't make any sense
whatsoever.
>> Yeah, and I mean,
why are bump stocks okay?
That makes no sense.
If we have a ban on automatic
weapons, why are we allowing
devices that turn semi-automatic
weapons into automatic weapons?
Why do we have a high capacity
magazines for civilians?
Why do we need militarized weaponry
in the hands of private citizens?
It makes no sense.
Look, I get it, I get that people
want to have a gun for protection.
I get the people
like to go hunting.
I totally respect that and
I, personally,
do not believe in a weapons ban.
I don't think that we should have
a gun ban, right?
But we don't have enough regulation
to ensure that background
checks are being done on every gun
purchase.
You can go to a gun show and
purchase as many weapons without
a background check from
a private seller.
These things need to be dealt with,
not on a municipal level,
on a federal level, okay,
on a federal level.
And by the way,
I just want to reiterate this.
The Denver metropolitan area had
seen more mass shootings in schools
between 1999 and 2019 than any of
the 25 largest metropolitan areas
in the United States.
And Colorado ranked in the top five
states for mass shootings at
schools and overall.
And that's according to a 2019
analysis by the Denver Post.
So if you're living in a state
that's swimming with guns and
gun violence,
again, you're not going to be able
to put up walls and protect
yourself in one part of that state.
You need leadership on a federal
level.
And we're just not seeing that.
We keep having the same
conversations.
We keep seeing lawmakers engage in
the exact same discourse, and
it results in no
real change in the country.
And journalists need to
do a better job in calling out
the lies by Republican law makers.
No one has proposed taking guns
away from law-abiding citizens.
And the fact that they're able to
run with that lie over and
over again is a big problem.