Colorado came close this week to making the state safer from senseless gun violence, but the Colorado Legislature can’t get past its curse.
The state is being held hostage by a small but vocal gang of gun-rights extremists, who have unarguably made this state a more dangerous place to live among a rising rate of gun ownership and gun violence.
The bullying fringe-right of the Republican Party was able, once again, to stymie a modest “Red Flag” measure of gun safety that even the state’s stalwart Republicans stand behind.
Likely suspects in the state Senate’s State Affairs committee killed Colorado’s nascent Red Flag bill, which sought only to allow families of gun owners and police to temporarily get firearms away from seriously mentally ill people in a crisis.
These are the people who could easily have been prevented from murdering a young sheriff deputy in Highlands Ranch, innocent patients in a Colorado Springs family planning clinic, and a dozen people in Aurora who just went out to a movie.
Conservative and liberal sheriffs, prosecutors, Aurora GOP Congressman Mike Coffman and police from all over the state rallied behind Colorado’s proposed red-flag bill. The legislation had the backing of conservative Republican stalwarts such as Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler, Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock and Aurora area state Rep. Cole Wist.
These aren’t just politically conservative Republicans. These people are staunch conservatives.
But they and others are sensible enough to know that the Feb. 14 massacre at a Parkland, Fla. high school was a very real turning point in America. These proponents of Colorado’s red-flag bill were sensible enough to see that flaws in state gun statute keeps families and law enforcement from keeping firearms away from people too mentally ill to responsibly have them.
The results of that failure have repeatedly been deadly and catastrophic.
The arguments against this modest measure and others are always the same, circular and sophomoric. Critics point to how Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz should have been stopped by the FBI or state officials but didn’t. They’re right. However, just because someone, somewhere mishandled a law, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have laws.
Douglas County sheriff Deputy Zackari Parrish was murdered by a mentally ill man who easily could have been stopped if there were red-flag laws on the books and enforced.
But tone-deaf critics refuse to see that unrestricted gun rights for mentally ill people in crisis is a catastrophe that society can and must prevent — not a scenario to protect.
These critics refuse to understand that the political tide has turned in Colorado and the rest of the country. A vast majority of residents here want common sense gun-safety measures like this wrongly upended red-flag bill. Colorado residents overwhelmingly want universal background checks. They want an end to needless horrors such as bumps stocks and military-type weapons in the hands of civilians.
There is no doubt that Colorado is going to get those things. Soon.
The wave of young voters unimpressed by the fringe-right’s obstinance on this issue, and the rest of the state’s exasperation with these antics are telling.
It’s time for the majority of Colorado Republicans, who are reasonable, practical conservatives, to reclaim control over their party before they are virtually removed from power.
Rather than kowtow to the rabid right, Colorado conservatives must appeal to the more centrist majority and persuade them to vote for reason. Vote for a government that has the good sense to protect its citizens from critically mentally ill people who have access to guns.
There’s nothing nefarious or surreptitious about a red-flag-legislation idea that more than 30 other states are embracing. The only problem with Colorado’s red-flag law is that we allowed a few misguided politicians to yank this important opportunity away from us.
That’s something Colorado can and will fix.