O’Rourke continues push for gun control at rally
Candidate connects El Paso shooting to Aurora
AUROR A » Beto O’Rourke repeated his recent call to round up high-powered, assault-style weapons and pushed for stronger gun control measures Thursday during an outdoor town hall in this Denver suburb, but rarely has his attention to the issue resonated so deeply in a crowd.
O’Rourke’s visit to Aurora, his first to Colorado since he joined the small army of Democrats angling to challenge President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, took place near the site of the 2012 movie theater mass shooting. It drew people with connections to that event, including the parents of victim Jessica Ghawi and state Rep. Tom Sullivan, who was spurred to enter politics after his son Alex was killed.
At one point, Columbine survivor Evan Todd, from the crowd, urged O’Rourke to take an even harder stance by subjecting a wider range of weapons to his proposed mandatory buyback program.
“The (mass) murders all happen with semiautomatics,” he said. “Why not ban (all) semiautomatics?”
Standing outside the Aurora Municipal Center in the early evening, O’Rourke, a former congressman from El Paso, sought early on to connect those shootings to last month’s mass shooting in his hometown, which killed 22 people at a Walmart. And he took aim at Trump, accusing him of doing too little to stem the recurring mass shootings, of using harmful rhetoric and of failing to act on issues ranging from climate change to immigration reform.
The candidate recounted a May rally for the president at which an attendee shouted that migrants at the border should be shot, drawing a straight line to the El Paso shooting. The shooter told police he sought to target “Mexicans.”
“This wasn’t just a disaster that befell our community,” O’Rourke said. “This is a violent, racist country — with a racist in the White House who’s directing that violence against the most vulnerable among us, including communities of immigrants. So when this happens in El Paso, Texas, we must connect the dots for our fellow Americans so that they understand the cost and the consequence of Donald Trump — (and) so they understand the cost and the consequence of our failure collectively (to act on guns), because all of us are the government.”
The event drew Denver-area voters with a hunger for candidates to take on the gun issue directly — although some were skeptical O’Rourke could get his policies enacted in the current
partisan climate.
“We’ve got to be strong at this moment,” he told the crowd of more than 200 that gathered in the early evening.
“He’s going to take gun control and move it forward,” said Michelle Mondragon, 65, who nonetheless sees O’Rourke as a longshot for the nomination, based on polls that have him stuck in the low single digits. She said she had donated to his campaign, largely based on his stances in favor of gun restrictions and help for immigrants.
In recent weeks, O’Rourke increasingly has channeled his anger over gun violence in public ways, culminating in his call for the mandatory buyback program.
During last week’s Democratic primary debate, O’Rourke declared to applause: “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow (them) to be used against our fellow Americans anymore.”
An early questioner Thursday took issue with that remark.
“I am here to say: Hell, no, you’re not,” Lauren Boebert said to scattered jeers.
She had driven three hours from Rifle on the Western Slope to deliver that message. She owns a restaurant called Shooters Grill, where the wait staff packs heat, and her Glock handgun was holstered at her side Thursday.
Boebert, 32, pressed O’Rourke to explain “how you intend to legislate the hearts of men and leave American citizens like myself” defenseless.
“I refuse to accept that” people are inherently evil, O’Rourke responded. “This doesn’t happen in any other country. There are 329 million of us. There are 390 million guns. No other country has this kind of ratio. No other country allows its citizens to buy weapons that were designed for war. … The logic of your argument is, Why shouldn’t we allow you to have a bazooka or drive a tank down the street?”
Erica Mayo, who lives in Brighton but has El Paso roots — she held a sign saying “El Paso Strong” — also responded to Boebert’s concern for gun owners’ rights, growing passionate as she implored: “We have a right to live a life without fear.”
O’Rourke’s campaign also outlined plans for a Friday morning roundtable discussion in Denver with family members of mass shooting victims. O’Rourke then plans to participate in a Global Climate Strike demonstration in front of Union Station, intended to push for action to address climate change.