I’m calling Gov. Hickenlooper endangered for a reason: he just made a rather poor life choice. You see, the fellow bowed to pressure from East Coast liberals and signed into law today an effective firearms ban masquerading as a “high capacity magazine ban.” John Hickenlooper is apparently just self-aware enough to realize what problems this is going to cause him down the line: “[Hickenlooper] said his office later today will release a “signing statement” to try to explain how the bills, particularly one that limits ammunition rounds, should be interpreted.”

If you’re explaining, you’re losing. And here’s why Hickenlooper is explaining:

A longer version of state senator Kevin Lundberg’s points here. The short version is that the legislators who constructed the ‘high capacity magazine ban’ either didn’t know or didn’t care that new ‘standard’ ten round magazines are easily convertible into larger magazines, which makes them just as subject to the new law as the larger ones. As well as the guns that need those magazines in order to operate. That means Coloradans technically now can’t buy ‘em, can’t sell ‘em, can’t even transfer ‘em to other people… in Colorado*. The whole thing is pretty much an exercise in demonstrating why you don’t let Democrats write legislation unless it’s on something that they know something about, like increasing minority unemployment**.

Amusingly, Hickenlooper thinks that this won’t hurt him in the next election:

For all of their fervor, Hickenlooper sees the demonstrators a small minority. “Not only do they not represent the middle, I don’t think they represent the Republican party. I don’t think they represent a large number of people,” Gov. Hickenlooper said.

…Oh, dear.

Oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear. There are many things that social conservatives, defense hawks, small-government types, and libertarians disagree on. The Second Amendment is generally not one of them. So, no, I’m pretty sure that the folks upset about these new limitations to their civil rights actually do represent the Republican party. And I suspect that in 2014 there’s not going to be a repeat of the [Colorado***] GOP’s 2010 internal meltdown…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*If you think that this makes the law unenforceable, congratulations: you’re in broad agreement with more than one Coloradan county sheriff.

**Which, admittedly, is something that the Democratic party hasn’t explicitly endorsed since just longer than my lifetime. Well… on the federal level, at least. More or less.

[***Added for clarity.]