When Tom Sullivan was elected to the Colorado legislature in 2016, it was in no small part due to his strong stance on gun laws and the need for better gun safety. Sullivan lost his son Alex when a gunman opened fire in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in 2012. Since being elected, Rep. Sullivan and his fellow Democratic lawmakers have worked to pass an important gun safety law, called a red flag law. Under the law, a judge could temporarily take away someone’s guns if they are deemed an immediate threat to themselves or others.
These are the kinds of laws that try to save women and children from domestic violence perpetrators and individuals in crisis from harming themselves. But Colorado Republicans are not happy. In fact, Arapahoe GOP Vice Chair Brenda Stokes thinks it’s unfair and wrong that Tom Sullivan ran on a gun safety platform and had the hubris to mention that his son was murdered by a person that might have been stopped had there been red flag laws in place at the time. She told CBS News, “[Y]ou have a politician that ran on a campaign that politicized sadly the loss of his son … and forgot about the important issues that U.S. parents are faced with, especially with those horrible bills that just passed the state legislature.”
The “horrible bills” affecting parents more than Tom Sullivan’s murdered son? A ban on gay conversion therapy; work to cut down healthcare costs; budgeting money for full-day kindergarten; and environmental and public health initiatives. Yes. Rep. Tom Sullivan “politicized” his son’s death to make sure that children are not murdered by people who should not have access to firearms.
Stokes’ opinion falls directly into line with the Republican Party’s coordinated attacks on Sullivan since Democrats were able to pass a number of laws, including a red flag law signed by Gov. Jared Polis this past year, after blue-wave November. It is essential that we remind everyone that there was an election this past November, and that the Democratic Party took majority control of the Colorado legislature. They did this without having districts gerrymandered into oligarchies, and without supressing citizens’ right to vote.