Colorado faces a deadly problem of too many felons illegally possessing firearms and using them to commit even more crimes that tear our communities apart. That problem is about to get worse unless the legislature acts now.
Last year the legislature passed and Gov. Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 271, “Misdemeanor Reform,” which reduced the penalties for misdemeanors. With a title like that, you’d think the focus would be on misdemeanors. But buried within its 300 pages was a profound change to a felony crime that should concern all Coloradans: specifically, the law decriminalized the possession of firearms by most convicted felons.
A little background: Once a person is convicted of a felony, whether by a jury verdict or a guilty plea, that person is prohibited from possessing firearms, and doing so is a felony offense, albeit a low-level, probation-eligible one in Colorado. Beyond that, a convicted felon can’t pass a background check to purchase a firearm under federal or state law. So, historically, if a police officer contacted a convicted felon with a gun hidden in their waistband, the police would not only arrest the suspect but also seize the gun. That all changes March 1 when SB-271 goes into effect. The new law prohibits only felons convicted of Victims’ Rights Act offenses from carrying guns, opening the door to all other felons to carry guns without consequence.
The Victims Rights Act in Colorado guarantees certain rights to victims of crimes named in the law. These are typically crimes against persons, such as murder, sex assault and child abuse, among many others. Drug distribution, theft and fraud are serious crimes, but they do not come with VRA guarantees.
While Colorado leads the nation in motor vehicle thefts, and we see the heartbreaking impact of drug dealers pushing deadly poison on addicts and minors, those are just some of the convicted felons this new law will now allow to carry guns on our streets.
Aside from the commonsense idea that society doesn’t want more convicted felons carrying around guns, we can learn a lot from the data. As the district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, I’ve taken a data-driven approach to criminal justice, both in launching the first public data transparency dashboard and how we work hand-in-hand with law enforcement. That data shows that convicted felons carrying firearms are often linked to other serious crimes. For example, of the 267 times my office filed a felon-in-possession charge last year, 37% of those charges were filed along with other serious crimes like murder, robbery and drug distribution.
My office is also a member of RAVEN, the Regional Anti-Violence Enforcement Network, a federal and state law enforcement task force whose mission is to forensically identify and focus investigative, prosecutorial and community resources to remove and disrupt the violent criminals, gangs and drug traffickers in metro Denver. In short, RAVEN goes after the shooters that are currently plaguing our streets.
One of the ways they do this is through enforcing the felon-in-possession statute. In 2019 the RAVEN task force seized 111 guns from violent criminals. That number shot up to 197 in 2021, and they’ve already seized 24 guns in January of 2022. RAVEN reports that if SB-271 had been in effect from 2019-2021 they would not have been able to charge approximately 30% of their cases against felons in possession of guns. That leaves more potential shooters – with guns in hand – on the street.
SB-271 also diminishes our ability to solve crimes. Just last year, the Aurora Police Department responded to 633 shootings. At each scene they looked for shell casings to put into NIBIN, a national database that forensically links shell casings from unsolved cases to firearms collected as evidence. When a convicted felon is caught with a gun, the police are able to test-fire the weapon to determine whether it has ever been used in other crimes. Once this law goes into effect, allowing more felons to possess guns, police will lose a valuable investigatory tool they need to solve serious crimes, including murders.
A few days ago, Chief Pazen of the Denver Police Department criticized the decriminalization of many felons possessing firearms, noting his officers seized more than 2,000 guns in Denver just last year. He’s right. I encourage the legislature and Gov. Polis to fix the mistakes made in SB-271 so we can keep guns out of the hands of all felons, including the fast escalating number of convicted car thieves and drug dealers we are seeing in Colorado, before it is too late.
John Kellner is the district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, which includes Arapaoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties.
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