January 06, 2016 11:42 AM UTC

Morgan Carroll Makes Guns an Aurora Issue

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• by: Colorado Pols

We don’t post all of the blast emails we get from political candidates, but we wanted to take a moment to highlight a very smart action alert sent out yesterday by Democratic CD-6 candidate Morgan Carroll, in response to President Barack Obama’s executive actions to tighten background checks for gun sales:

I remember the horrific day the Aurora movie theater mass shooting happened. My house was five minutes away from the theater itself. For me, that was it — enough was enough. [Pols emphasis]

With the help of Captain Mark Kelly — husband of Gabby Giffords — I fought hard to propose and eventually pass universal background checks on gun purchases in Colorado…

The moment to step up and speak louder and bolder about gun safety in our country comes today on the heels of President Obama’s executive action.

We’ve endured tragedy after tragedy, and we can’t just wave the white flag on gun violence.

In 2013, Sen. Carroll was a sponsor of House Bill 1229, the law requiring background checks for most transfers of guns in our state. That law on the books means Colorado already does more to require background checks than anything Obama ordered yesterday–or for that matter has the power to do without congressional action. The hard-fought passage of this law is a big reason why Colorado lawmakers were in attendance at the White House yesterday, including the two Colorado state senators who were ousted in gun lobby-organized recalls of 2013.

The political will to take on gun safety in Colorado in 2013 was in large part the result of an horrific mass shooting in July of 2012 at the Century Theater in Aurora. As Aurora’s state senator, and now a congressional candidate to represent the scene of one of the greatest tragedies in our state’s history, Carroll is in a unique position to show leadership.

There’s no question that the intense blowback from the gun lobby against the 2013 gun safety laws has frightened Democratic lawmakers here and elsewhere, much like right-wing activist Jon Caldara predicted it would. But in Aurora, we do not see the same risks for Democrats in taking up this issue that might exist elsewhere. This is an diverse urban district with a history of gun violence tragedies great and small.

By taking this issue out of the headlines and taking it to the local level–her own level as Aurora’s longtime state representative and senator–Carroll may turn the conventional wisdom on the “third rail” of guns on its head.

That would be a bad thing for Mike Coffman, whose party-line pro-gun rhetoric is not going over well as it is.