Amid a gun policy debate gripping the nation in the wake of multiple mass shootings, one illuminating aspect can be found in the Republican primary for governor in Colorado.
In a Colorado Independent survey of six GOP candidates running, two say they would sign a bill banning bump stocks, a gun accessory that turns a semi-automatic weapon into one that can spray off shots like a machine gun, and one says he would want to see a federal ban.
The once obscure and deadly device has become a flashpoint in a broader debate about gun violence since President Donald Trump signaled he would ban them and even the NRA said the government should review whether selling the gun parts should be legal. Republicans who control the Colorado Senate, on the other hand, recently killed a bill to ban them.[1][2]
Meanwhile, one Republican candidate for governor in Colorado, Victor Mitchell,[3] has made tackling school shootings a centerpiece of his campaign in the lead-up to the April 14 GOP state assembly and the June 26 primary.
A top priority for him if he becomes governor, he said, would be to create a “nonpolitical task force” that involves a spectrum of experts from FBI profilers to mental health professionals and more who would come up with specific solutions. Goals, he says, would include greater funding for mental health, family interventions, strengthening schools and law enforcement, “increased profiling and community engagement,” and reviewing HIPAA privacy laws, among others.
“We’re going to bring in the gunners, we’re going to bring in the anti-gunners, we’re going to put everything on the table with full respect of the Second Amendment and dealing with the fact that 300 million guns and tens of millions of assault rifles are already in circulation that have been legally purchased that our citizens are legally entitled to have,” Mitchell told The Colorado Independent. “But we’re going to come up with specific ways to reduce gun violence by getting ahead of this instead of waiting for mass shootings to happen and then having kind of an emotional knee-jerk reaction.”
Asked about bump stocks, the candidate who says he had an A+ rating from the NRA in the one term he served in the legislature, says he would have no problem banning them as governor.
“I don’t like the idea of converting semi-[automatic] to full-automatic weapons and I think that’s exactly what bump stocks do,” he says, while characterizing them as a side issue in the larger context of preventing gun violence.
A Castle Rock entrepreneur who is putting $3 million of his own money into his campaign, Mitchell has gone on TV to talk about his gun violence push and says he has incorporated the message into his stump speeches along the campaign trail within the past few weeks. [4]
