A Welcome Unintended Consequence Of Colorado's New Laws

The new Bloomberg-backed background checks law in Colorado has had an unintended and welcome side effect: it prevented a gun buyback. Together Colorado had planned a gun buyback for August 4th in the People's Republic of Boulder. They had to call it off at the request of Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle.

Organizers have canceled a gun buyback at the request of Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle, who said Colorado's new gun laws would make the Aug. 4 event nearly impossible to stage.

"The bottom line is what we anticipated doing would still be legal -- but procedurally we can't follow through with it at this time," Pelle said Tuesday.

A stricter law that went into effect July 1 requires buyers to go to a licensed firearms dealer and undergo a background check. The InstaCheck systems used in the checks are not mobile, which means they couldn't be used at the sheriff's compound where the buyback was planned.

"It's not a portable system," Pelle said. "It can't be done at the site."

Essentially, for the event to work, Pelle said the group would have to find a licensed firearms dealer to host the event and then pay the dealer per transaction, "which becomes very unproductive," he said.

That is just too bad for both Together Colorado and Sheriff Pelle who gave the event his full support.

It is also really too back for Boulder metalworking artist Jessica Adams who was to be given parts of the destroyed firearms to make a sculpture "creating gun violence (sic) awareness."