Colorado link. Aurora Rep. Rhonda Fields will meet with the president Tuesday.
Colorado Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, well-known for her gun control advocacy, is to meet with President Barack Obama on Tuesday when he announces executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence in the country.
Reached Monday as she was heading to Denver International Airport, Fields, who supported gun legislation in Colorado in 2013, said it is important that the president take action given the number of shootings in the country over the past several years.
That includes the theater shooting in her hometown of Aurora, where 12 people were killed and dozens of others were injured in July 2012. Her own son was shot and killed about 10 years ago.
“I’m very interested in hearing what the president wants to do in the executive order, making sure we have universal background checks, close the gun-show loophole, private sales ... ” Fields said. “That definitely has to be addressed.”
Obama is scheduled to make his announcement at about 9:40 a.m. Mountain time.
During a White House conference call Monday afternoon, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Attorney General Loretta Lynch outlined some of what will be in the president’s executive actions.
Those include background checks for people who buy guns at gun shows and over the Internet; overhauling the background-check system to make it 24 hours a day, seven days a week; and encouraging research to develop smarter and safer firearm technology.
Dave Kopel, research director of the Independence Institute and an adjunct professor of advanced constitutional law at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, said what’s being announced Tuesday appears to be less dramatic than the hype.
“Whether the regulations are lawful depends on whether they are consistent with the text of the statutes enacted by Congress,” Kopel said in an e-mail. “Regulations can add detail to the gray areas in a statute, but they can’t contradict the statute. So until the regulations are actually published, it is impossible to say whether they are lawful or not.”
In 2013, Democrats passed a law that required Coloradans to undergo a background check when they sold and transferred a firearm, whether the gun was a purchase from a store or a swap between close friends. Colorado closed the gun-show loophole by requiring checks for purchases at gun shows after Columbine.
“The nation has to catch up with Colorado,” Fields said.