“Senate Dems have made it known, ‘Sheriffs, obey or no pay for you,’” said Maketa, one of some 30 state sheriffs who attended public hearings on the gun bills to voice opposition. “The first word that comes to my mind is extortion.”

He cited an email he received from another sheriff that read, “…I have been advised by a reliable source at the Capitol that the Dems are seriously not pleased with the [sheriffs’] positions on the gun bills… support of SB197 [one of the gun bills] would put us in a more favorable light for salary bill support from the Dems…”

Democrats hold majorities in both legislative houses. Republican Rep. Lori Saine told FoxNews.com that Maketa’s charge must be taken seriously.

“Any implication that this salary bill is being stymied needs to be seriously investigated,” she said.

But Senate Democrats deny that gun politics has anything to do with holding up sheriffs’ pay increases, which are set by state law and have been unchanged since 2006.

“The position on pay raises has nothing to do with the sheriff’s stance on gun safety legislation, and everything to do with the economy,” Doug Schepman, spokesman for the Senate Democrats, told FoxNews.com.

— And yet, the Democrats’ weren’t terribly concerned about the economy when they instituted Universal background checks — which will require all manner of upgrades to the existing NICS system, nor when they chased out of Colorado many a profitable business, and agreed to cripple many of those small businesses that depend on tourism from sportsman.

Imagine!

[…]Democrats say that they will allow a salary bill to raise sheriff pay to go to the floor, but only if seven Republicans, many of whom oppose the pay bill on fiscal grounds, sign on as co-sponsors. So far, that has not happened. Maketa said that is a hurdle that the gun bills did not face.

“None of these gun control bills they passed required any Republican co-sponsors — but for the sheriff pay bill, [the speaker] required seven Republican co-sponsors to put it up for a vote,” Maketa said. “I’m sorry, but that tells the truth right there.”

Maketa said some of the gun control bills that have passed the legislature as unenforceable — that he would simply assume that people’s guns had been purchased before the law and that they therefore would be grandfathered in.

“I can’t tell you when those [guns] were sold, bought and purchased. As far as I’m concerned, they were all pre-July 1 if the governor does sign this bill,” he told a crowd last week.

[…]However, Maketa clarified to FoxNews.com on the phone that he would enforce laws when it was possible.

“I will enforce the new gun laws. I have to,” he said.

But other sheriffs have said they won’t, including Weld County Sheriff John Cooke, who told GreeleyTribune.com that he “won’t bother enforcing” certain new gun laws.

Despite Democrats’ outrage at statements like that, they maintain that it has not had an impact on sheriff salaries.

“In no way did I, nor my office, threaten the sheriffs that if they did not support these bills, they would not get a pay increase,” Senate President John Morse wrote on his Facebook page Tuesday.

Morse, you’ll recall, is the Senate President who told Rachel Maddow that ignoring constituents was necessary to do brave things like forcing on them gun laws they don’t want — turning law abiding citizens into criminals merely because you have the legislative numbers and promises and money from east coast lobbying concerns, the White House, and Mayor Bloomberg.

Look, of course no one is going to say directly that pay raises will be held up as a result of the stance of many Colorado sheriffs toward party-line anti-gun legislation that they were denied the ability to testify in regards to.

But it is very clear here in Colorado that the urban centers are dancing to the tune of out of state interests, and that the people of Colorado polled at 70-30 against the laws that have been imposed on them by a temporary law-making majority — many of whom, including the Governor, ran as being pro-Second Amendment.

They lied.  And our sheriffs — also elected officials — have determined that the laws these two-faced legislators forced on the people of Colorado against their collective will, especially those that contain no enforcement measures, save a direct and indisputable move to turn Colorado into a police state (you’re arrested for a pre-ban high cap mag and forced to prove in court that you purchased it before the ban, eg; or you are arrested for having a weapon, with no proof that you purchased said weapon and went through a background check — FFL background checks not including in them the type of weapon, and the state and federal database supposedly wiped clean after 24 hours — then forced to prove that you either bought the weapon pre-ban, or that you did indeed undergo a background check before your friend handed you the weapon to use at the range, eg) cannot and so shall not be actively enforced.

The sheriffs have been outspoken about the way these laws were pushed, about their having been frozen out of the process, and about the real long-term aims of these laws (establishing a registry, doing away with grandfathered weapons, denying private transactions of legal items).  The Colorado Democrats — who have tried to pretend this is all about children’s safety, without having passed a single law that would have done a thing to prevent either Sandy Hook or Aurora — took that as an affront, and it is clear that, had not Sheriff Maketa shed light on this issue, the Dems would most certainly have sought to find a way to punish the state sheriffs.

It’s who they are.   Etc.