Colorado gun crackdown law found to be built on faulty data

The data used to justify a law in Colorado that expanded background check mandates on all gun buyers is false, flawed and faulty, a media-driven analysis showed.

The Associated Press looked at state data that’s been compiled over the past year that the background check requirement has been in effect, and found in a key budget report that the projected impact had been massively overstated.

Now even at least one Democratic lawmaker wants to investigate whether or not millions of taxpayer dollars were misallocated based on the flawed projections — while Republicans are picking up where they left off a year ago and denouncing the regulatory crackdown on the Second Amendment, AP reported.

Democrats actually pushed through the background check law as a reaction to several high-profile shootings around the nation. Specifically, they aimed to keep guns away from those with criminal backgrounds and cited research that said about 420,000 would be subjected to additional state criminal reviews in the first two years of the law’s enactment.

So Democrats allocated $3 million to the state agency in charge of handling all the projected extra reviews and checks, the Colorado Bureau of Investigations.

But a year later, and the agency’s only performed 13,600 reviews — roughly 7 percent of what was predicted.

“I’m going to be asking some questions because I want to be a good steward of our tax dollars,” said Democratic Rep. Rhonda Fields, who nonetheless stood by the law and expressed optimism with its future, AP reported.

Republicans, however, weren’t so impressed.

“Nothing good came of the passage of the law, except we found out just how anti-gun Democrats in Colorado are,” said Republican Sen. Greg Brophy, AP reported.