With lawmakers now hard at work on the 2020-21 state budget and dealing with the pandemic, it leaves little oxygen in the room for some of the priorities outlined in the first two months of the 2020 session.

Case in point: two bills introduced in early March dealing with guns.

House Bill 1355 was postponed indefinitely on a 9-0 vote on Wednesday in the State, Veterans and Military Affairs committee. The bill, sponsored by Reps. Monica Duran of Wheat Ridge and Kyle Mullica of Thornton, would require gun owners to put either trigger locks or cable locks on their weapons, or store them in a gun safe rather than a cabinet. Firearms dealers would be required to provide buyers at the time of purchase with a locking device, and failure to do so could earn the dealer a $500 fine.

The bill outlines the types of locking devices, including biometric data (such as a fingerprint that could be used to unlock a gun safe). Duran, however, said the bill doesn’t dictate which kind of locking device to use, only that one should be used.

The bill also would create an offense — a Class 2 misdemeanor — of failure to store a firearm in a manner that could prevent a juvenile to gain access. In addition to juveniles, the bill also applies to anyone who is ineligible to possess a gun under state or federal law.

HB 1355 carried a small state cost of $52,000, which would be sent to the state Department of Public Health and Environment for a public education campaign. 

The Colorado chapter of Moms Demand Action, a national gun-control group, said in a statement that they look forward to “working with lawmakers next year to prioritize these important policies. Promoting responsible gun ownership continues to be vital to saving lives in Colorado. We’ll be back next year to continue this work, and in the meantime, we’ll keep doing all we can to urge gun owners to practice secure storage.”

House Bill 1356 met the same fate on Wednesday. 

The measure, sponsored by Reps. Tom Sullivan of Centennial and Sonya Jaquez Lewis of Longmont, requires those who own firearms to report when those guns are lost or stolen within 48 hours of making that discovery. Failure to do so could earn the gun owner a $25 fine for the first offense and would be classified as a class 3 misdemeanor for second or later offenses.

Two other high priority bills, to ban single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam containers, also went down to defeat. The pandemic has raised issues supporting the use of single-use plastic bags, which were on the agenda to be banned under House Bill 1163. According to a May 20 Vox report, “retailers are banning consumers from bringing in their own reusable bags, cities and states are rolling back or delaying single-use plastic bans, and municipalities are scaling back recycling operations, with hygiene fears underlying it all.”

To date, Starbucks has banned the use of customers’ reusable cups. Target no longer allows customers to bring in reusable bags, according to Vox.

The same applies to House Bill 1162, which would ban the use of polystyrene containers — Styrofoam — used in restaurants. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a 17-page document on guidelines for restaurants and bars, issued April 30, the CDC recommends “disposable food service items.” 

Both bills were put to rest by the House on May 28.