One Colorado congresswoman sponsoring gun control legislation doesn’t actually understand her own gun control legislation — or guns in general. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) tried to explain that by banning high capacity magazines, eventually bullets will be no longer available for these magazines.
DeGette re-introduced the “High Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act” back in January that would ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, and on Tuesday, she argued the wisdom behind the bill during a Denver Post forum Tuesday.
“I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available,” DeGette said.
Unfortunately for DeGette, there will be more bullets available even if the bill passes. Magazines can actually be reloaded with ammunition more than once. In fact, they can be reloaded hundreds of times.
“Two words — pretty stupid,” NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam told the Denver Post.
As the audience laughed at DeGette’s gaffe, Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith tried to rein them in and said “Let’s be educated as we make this decision.”
DeGette’s office issued a statement on Wednesday attempting to explain why she doesn’t understand what magazine clips are when she’s sponsoring a bill that bans them.
“The Congresswoman has been working on a high-capacity assault magazine ban for years, and has been deeply involved in the issue; she simply misspoke in referring to ‘magazines’ when she should have referred to ‘clips,’ which cannot be reused because they don’t have a feeding mechanism,” Spokeswoman Juliet Johnson said.
On Wednesday, President Obama was also in Denver pushing to restrict magazine capacity at the Denver Police Academy.
“Opponents of common-sense gun laws have ginned up fears among responsible gun owners that have nothing to do with what’s being proposed, not a thing to do with facts,” he told the audience.
But maybe these gun laws aren’t so “common-sense” after all if a gun bill’s sponsor doesn’t even understand what’s in the bill.
