Make My Day Better Supported by Everyone, Except Dems

While Rep. Cory Gardner and Sen. Ted Harvey's "Make My Day Better" bill was killed in committee on Monday, it appears that everyone in the state is in favor of the extension of exsiting law, except for Sen.(s) Peter Groff, Sue Windels and Chris Romer.

From today's Colorado Springs Gazette:

Our View - Wednesday

February 28, 2007 - 1:13AM

Shot down
Democrats revert to criminal-friendly form
Senate Democrats on Monday gunned down a commonsense extension of Colorado’s “make my day” law that would have protected people who use deadly force while defending themselves in a place of business. And what a bunch of criminal-coddling ninnies they seemed while doing so.
A citizen’s right to self defense is God-given and absolute, whether she is at home, at the workplace, riding in a car or walking down a sidewalk, so it always struck us as silly and superfluous that such laws are needed in the first place. But given the evident failure of some people to grasp the concept of an indivisible right to self-defense, we suppose such bills are a necessary evil.
All this one would have done is grant business owners the same protections all Coloradans enjoy if they have to use deadly force during a home invasion. But Democrats evidently believe the right to self defense changes with the scenery, and killed the bill on a 3-2 committee vote — using arguments that seem to confirm their reputations for caring more about criminals than for the rights of average citizens.
According to a report, Sen. Peter Groff, a Democrat from Denver, worried “that store owners could end up shooting teenagers they were fearful of just because they were talking too loud, wearing their baseball hat backward or listening to the rapper Snoop Dogg. Or he said a shooting could break out over shoplifting. ‘What we’re trying to do here I think is create some street-imposed death penalty that may be executed, excuse the pun, over a Milky Way bar,’ he said.”
That’s a twisted reading of what the bill would have done. Extending make-my-day protections to places of business wouldn’t have allowed a business owner to use deadly force for trivial purposes, but only in self-defense, if an intrusion was occurring or the owner felt he or she was in real peril. No one would escape prosecution for gunning down someone who swipes a candy bar — unless the thief is armed and dangerous, or the situation is escalating toward violence.

Read the rest of the editorial here.