Ban assault weapons now

Let's finish what Boulder started.

In 2018, in the wake of the Parkland school shooting, the city of Boulder passed a ban on assault weapons.

If you’ve never been to Boulder, residents once called it The People’s Republic of Boulder as they sipped coffee from mugs that said, “Keep Boulder Weird.” Maybe they still do. It is the home of the University of Colorado (the alma mater of one of my sons) and some of the prettiest views of the Rocky Mountains, ever.

That ban was just one piece of legislation passed around the country. At the time, town attorney Tom Carr told the local paper, The Daily Camera:

“I hope and pray we never have a mass shooting in Boulder, and what this ordinance is about is reducing, on the margins, the ease with which somebody could do that.”

But no more was the ink dry when the gun-delivery-system NRA smelled blood, and started a systematic battle against the ban through their Institute of Legislative Action, the angry lobbying arm of what was once a decent gun safety organization. One of their minions, the Colorado State Shooting Association, signed on to fight the ban just weeks later. Under the guise of defending the Second Amendment, money poured in from all over.

Trauma surgeons say an AR-15-style weapon is akin to a grenade being detonated in the body. But sure. Let’s talk about the Second Amendment.

Two weeks ago, State District Court Judge Andrew Hartman said that under a 2003 state law, neither cities nor counties could pass laws that were more restrictive than already-existing state and federal firearms laws. The NRA blood-garglers celebrated their win on Twitter:

Then, this past Monday, a 21-year old man walked into a Boulder supermarket with an AR-15-style rifle, and began shooting. By the time he was done, 10 people were dead.

In response to the supermarket massacre, the Colorado State Shooting Association opened the closet, reached to the back, and pulled out the dusty “Now is not the time to talk about gun legislation” response to the carnage they enabled.

In fact, it is time. Check out this list of mass shootings. Even as I create the link, I know that there will be more tomorrow or the next day or maybe both days. The weapon of choice — in Boulder, in Orlando, in Newtown — is an AR-15-style (only Colt-manufactured assault weapons can be called AR-15).

When would be the appropriate time to talk about this? When the dead are buried? Among the Boulder dead are Eric Talley, father of seven and the first police officer to respond to the call. Talley was once featured in the local paper for wading into a drainage ditch to save a family of ducks. He’d taught his children CPR, and one son recently was given an award for using what his dad taught him about CPR to save another child.

The others who were killed are:

• Tralona Bartkowiak, 49, who owned a clothing store

• Suzanne Fountain, 59, a financial counselor who loved the theater

• Teri Leiker, 51, who’d worked at the supermarket for 30 years

• Kevin Mahoney, 61, whose daughter posted on Twitter:

  

• Lynn Murray, 62, a former photo editor

• Rikki Olds, 25, a supermarket employee who, her mother speculated, may hae been shot because she stayed to make sure the customers were OK

• Neven Stanisic, 23, who left war-torn Bosnia as a child

• Denny Stong, 20, who loved model airplanes.

• Jody Waters, 65, about whom the media has said nothing.

May their memories be a revolution.