John,
America has a gun violence problem. But the gun violence we see every week, from the unprecedented and high-profile mass shootings to the daily crime and personal tragedies involving guns that barely get noticed by the news media, is a sign of a deeper problem.
The cultural and political movement on the Right to fetishize firearms and gun rights above everything else, including our right to be safe in public places like grocery stores, schools, or movie theaters, has warped debate around gun violence and gun control. Whether it is the NRA or groups even further to the right, like Colorado’s own Rocky Mountain Gun Owners—reasonable regulation of deadly firearms has been cast as extreme, repressive, and totalitarian.
Today is a sad reminder for all of us, but especially for everyone in Colorado, that the predictably dangerous effects of this distorting rhetoric have only gotten worse: it is 10 years to the day that 12 people lost their lives and dozens others were injured when a shooter dressed in tactical gear unloaded assault-style weapons at the Aurora Century movie theater.
With leaders like Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger, at the forefront of gun reform, we have made progress in Colorado and with the newly-passed bipartisan reform bill in Congress.
