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Efforts to extend Colorado’s “Make My Day” law to businesses were shot down coldly yesterday by a gang of wily lawmakers on the legislature’s House Judiciary Committee, a showdown that has taken place for the last several years with the same result.
On a near party-line vote, the committee killed the bill, which would have granted store owners and their workers the same right as homeowners to use deadly force if their lives were to be threatened (via the Grand Junction Sentinel and Denver Business Journal).
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“This is a self-defense bill that’s empowering the people of Colorado to make sure that they have the right to self-defense without worry that they would be prosecuted by their government,” says Representative Cory Gardner (pictured), a Yuma Republican running for U.S. House of Representatives in the Fourth Congressional District.
The Colorado District Attorneys’ Council calls the bill unnecessary, but Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden, who spoke for the County Sheriffs of Colorado, believes it would have empowered crime victims.
“I’m probably one of the few people here who has looked down the wrong end of a handgun,” says Alderden (via Denver Daily News). “I will tell you that in that circumstance time stops—it slows down, and in those moments, I shouldn’t have to stop and think about whether or not I’m going to be prosecuted.”