By Guillermo Alvarado

A couple of days ago the House of Representatives of the US state of Colorado approved by majority vote a bill to ban the sale and circulation of semi-automatic firearms in that entity, which would be a major step forward in the fight against the proliferation of arsenals.

As is well known, there are more guns in the possession of civilians than the registered number of citizens, including infants and the elderly, and the consequences of this situation often occur in unsuspected places, such as supermarkets, schools or churches.

That is why it is welcome that in Colorado a legal norm to partially regulate the lucrative business has taken a first step, although it could be the only one because now it has to go through the Senate, where it has little chance of success.

So that you can see that the issue of the firearms business is not an exclusive fixation of the members of the Republican Party, it turns out that the Democrats control the state and most of them do not agree with this law.

That already happened last year, when a similar initiative failed because senators and representatives feared angering their constituents.

This is also an example of how the biggest arms lobby in the northern power, the National Rifle Association, works. When it comes to handing out money or financing campaigns, it does not differentiate between donkeys and elephants, the innocent animals that identify the dominant parties.

Since the priority is to keep the business open, the manufacturers and sellers of ammunition do not care whether they distribute their handouts among Democrats or Republicans, at whatever level is necessary.

When a politician does not comply with their demands, a black campaign is launched to favor another politician who is more inclined to the merchants of death.

Here it is worth remembering that the law promoted in Colorado refers to semi-automatic weapons, those that use the gases of a shot to introduce a projectile in the chamber, but unlike the automatic ones, they need to pull the trigger every time you want to use it again.

One feature of these devices is that, as with the AR-15 assault rifle, it is relatively easy to modify them to fire bursts.

We are not talking, then, about controlling the sales of all types of arsenals, much less, as many are demanding, that a psychological profile be made of the eventual buyer to avoid arms to a psychopath.

Business is business and it doesn't matter if innocent people eventually die if sales, and profits, continue to rise.