‘They’re outlawing electrons, not guns’: State lawmakers launch attack on First AND Second Amendments

Colorado has been working very hard in recent years to out-California that leftist state in pursuit of ideological extremism.

Launch a state case against a wedding cake artist for his religion? Done.

Try to force counselors to promote LGBT agenda points while banning them from speaking the truth? Lawmakers have claimed it’s “speech” when LGBT is promoted, but it’s “behavior” when alternatives are discussed, actually using “speech.” Done.

Attack church programs that deliver food to people? Done.

Attack preschools that include faith elements? Done.

Raise taxes massively but call them “fees” to get around a constitutional limitation. This scheme means that state residents pay “fees” to use their own roads and bridges, but out-of-state travelers are not obligated to pay those “fees.” Done.

Create a self-perpetuating revolving door in the legislature where many of the Democrat newcomers now are “appointed” by political committees, not elected by voters. Done.

Tap several billionaires to over-fund state legislative races so that Democrats win. Done

But now a columnist, Independence Institute chief Jon Caldara, has gone to Complete Colorado to outline an agenda that attacks the First Amendment AND the Second Amendment in one plan being pushed by the Democrat-majority legislature.

The state’s governor is far-left Democrat Jared Polis, who promotes his homosexual lifestyle choice, and the state’s Supreme Court held only Democrats when they tried in 2024 to remove President Donald Trump from the election ballot. They were slapped down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The leftists’ newest agenda is part of their gun-phobia, and involves a move that would make it illegal to have Xs and Os of computer code in a certain order.

Caldara notes that it formerly was liberals who championed free speech.

Not anymore.

“Now in Colorado it is punishable to ‘mis-gender’ someone. By speaking truthfully, say calling a man, ‘a man,’ when he’d rather you not, you can be brought up on civil charges,” he explained. “Our Democrats voted for this … . ”

The new plan is the Democrats’ House Bill 1144, to ban making gun parts on a three-dimensional printer.

Those make little plastic parts, widgets and such.

“And what tells the 3D printer what to print? A computer file of course, computer code. Thus House Bill 1144 wisely makes having the computer code to make certain gun parts a crime,” he warned. “Having ones and zeros, the binary building blocks of code, in a certain order will be a felony.”

The anti-Constitution thought process of Democrats ignores the following, he said.

“Code is written. A person wrote it, expressed his thoughts in a manner that could be conveyed to a machine. Code is human expression — speech, protected by the First Amendment. And what it creates here is also protected by the Second. Colorado is arguably now the most anti-gun state in the country. So much so the state might be rifling through your iCloud account.

“Remember, this is not a physical thing. It’s not really a gun or a gun magazine because it doesn’t even exist. It is basically a computerized picture of something, a digital symbol only existing in photons,” he said. “This is how crazed Colorado’s gun-phobes are. They’re outlawing electrons, not guns.”

And it could backfire, he suggested. “Let’s remember the e-books you read are also only digital files. When you empower the government to outlaw digital files you empower future Trumps to ban books. Ones and zeros are ones and zeros.”

This is a state so progressive that as recently as the 1990s it saw officials in Gilpin County paying out a $700,000 settlement because they officially labeled one resident a “N—-” in their government records.