Rough-and-tumble “no compromise” Rocky Mountain Gun Owners is a major player in Colorado politics, mainly due to the way it pressures Republican lawmakers from the right, tracking their votes and floor speeches and threatening to run primary candidates and ugly message campaigns against them come election season.
The group gained increased leverage in 2013 when Democrats acting in response to the mass shooting at the Aurora Theater in Colorado and at Sandy Hook School in Connecticut passed a suite of gun-control laws. The measures were fairly mild. They closed gun-purchase background check loopholes, prevented convicted violent offenders and mentally ill residents of the state from buying guns, and limited legal ammunition magazines to 15 rounds.
Rocky Mountain Gun Owners virulently opposed the bills. The group organized protests and gun-giveaways and steered money to candidates in recall elections that ultimately unseated two Democratic senators. The organization also surely made a lot of money in the process, sending out fundraising emails at a regular clip brimming with scary rhetoric about the end of freedom.
As a general topic, “gun control” is unpopular in Colorado, but the measures passed at the Capitol in 2013, taken one by one, were and remain popular with the public.
That’s a fact you would never suspect to be true by watching Republican lawmakers at the Capitol. Nothing animates them quite the way the gun laws have done. They have tried to repeal the 2013 laws ever since they passed. This year, they are still referring to them as grave infringements on liberty and as the tyrannical work of gun grabbers — even though state data demonstrates that many criminals were turned away from gun shops after failing background checks over the last two years and even though there has never been a gun “grabbed” by authorities from anyone in the state.
The inflammatory rhetoric does nothing to make discussion about the gun laws any less difficult nor to foster dealmaking compromise discussions on any other contentious topics. And it is unlikely to be tempered any time soon.
State Senator Scott Renfroe and other Republican lawmakers sent out a Rocky Mountain Gun Owner pitch today. It is the usual fare.
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Subject: Get in the Fight Today
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If you didn’t see Dudley’s e-mail the other day, please make sure you take a look below.
Colorado gun owners are in the midst of the biggest and most challenging fight we have ever faced.
And now, more than ever, we need you to get into the fight.
Billionaire gun-grabber Michael Bloomberg is going to spend millions to defend his anti-gun majority in the legislature, and it’s up to patriots like you and me to stop them.
We need every pro-gun patriot in Colorado, including you, to join the ranks of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners’ grassroots army.
And, if you’ve already joined, I can’t thank you enough for your commitment to the cause.
There is no group that is more effective than RMGO when it comes to defending our right to keep and bear arms, and I’ve witnessed this firsthand in all my years at the Capitol.
Make sure you click and watch the video (above) with Dudley and me, and other proven pro-gun legislators on why you need to join RMGO right away!
It’s time we stand up and take back our rights from the gun-grabbers in Denver.
Make sure you join RMGO and get into the fight today!
In Liberty,
Scott Renfroe
State Senator – District 13
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BS based lifeforms like the liberal author of this “article” hate the term “Gun Grabber” because it succinctly sums up their agenda. Did any guns get “grabbed?” Was there proposed legislation seeking to ban certain firearms? YES. Using your failure to pass laws taking away people’s right to possess certain firearms as evidence that no gun was ever taken from anybody is a typical example of why informed people laugh at liberals.
So instead they ban certain firearm magazines so that you can no longer buy them instate, then claim they never “grabbed” any magazine. The same thing is being attempted with ammunition. They greatly exaggerate the number by some 10 fold or more of private sales that would be subject to their new background check law. The number of lives proven to be saved by this law? ZERO.
Word games are for children, grow up and own your agenda for what it is. If your policies were so great and sound, then you wouldn’t have to lie to people to get them passes would you?