In 2012, Alex Sullivan was murdered in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theatre gun massacre. His father, Tom Sullivan, vowed to do everything in his power to try and make the world a place where the pain he suffers as the parent of a deceased child is not repeated because of lax gun laws. In November 2018, Sullivan was elected to Congress. He and his Democratic colleagues just finished hammering out the job they were elected to do, toiling over what the Denver Post called a “legislative session [that] will be remembered as one of the most transformative in decades.”
Democrats, who had complete control of the legislative agenda for the first time in four years, and Gov. Jared Polis were able to pass legislation they believe will drive down the cost of health care, pay for full-day kindergarten and overhaul regulations for the oil and gas industry.
Rep. Sullivan pushed for “red flag” gun laws to be a part of the new conversation. Red flag gun laws allow judges to temporarily remove firearms from people they believe may do others harm. Sullivan was given the pen used by newly elected Democratic Gov. Jared Polis to sign the bill into law on April 12. This is something Sullivan clearly ran on and was elected to work toward. But the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and vice-chair of the Colorado Republican Party Kristi Burton Brown don’t like democracy, so they are trying to recall all of the democratically elected officials who ran on stronger gun laws, were elected to pass stronger gun laws, and then passed stronger gun laws.
“Rep. Tom Sullivan needs to be recalled because, like the rest of the Democrats in the legislature this session, he did not represent the families of Colorado,” said Kristi Burton Brown, an attorney and the vice-chair of the Colorado Republican Party. She filed the request with the secretary of state.
“Colorado moms were shut down again and again when they came to testify, and Rep. Sullivan continually voted against our families' interests. The Democrat overreach this session was simply too far," Brown said.
Colorado moms were shut out? This is a nice Trumpian projection of how most Republicans have responded to mothers fighting for gun safety laws. But the red flag laws have been hotly contested throughout the country, and there are law enforcement officers in Colorado that have been publicly critical and insubordinate in regard to the new laws.
Last November’s blue wave didn’t just change the legislatures of states from red to blue, it changed the diversity of those elected bodies. States like Colorado may have shifted, but the Centennial state has all kinds of right-wing zealots willing to go out of business in idiotic attempts at stopping black football players from protesting racial injustice, and Republican representatives willing to lie and say that white Americans were as equally affected by racist lynchings as black Americans. Still, voters came out and elected more women and people of color to office than ever before, and these kinds of changes terrify people—especially white men with guns. Just ask the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners.
They haven’t released “more details,” yet, but you get the idea. According to the Denver Post, Brown is acting as a “private citizen” in her attempts to recall Rep. Sullivan. Asked whether or not she was working with the gun lobby on this recall, Brown told the Post that, “Anyone who wants to get involved in this recall is welcomed.” Rep. Sullivan is not going to let angry homicide apologists dissuade him from doing the job he was elected to do.
“Alex being murdered in the Aurora theater massacre was the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with,” he said in a statement. “Threats from extremists like Rocky Mountain Gun Owners do not scare me, and they will certainly never stop me from protecting other families from that heartbreak. I won’t be bullied by the gun lobby and I will always keep my promises to my community and my constituents.”
The Republican Party cannot win elections by democratic means. They must lie and cheat and steal for the seats they get. They rely on small-minded interests with deep pockets. Nothing exemplifies this more than tactics like the ones Brown and the gun lobby are employing here.