Gun safety rally draws crowd at Boulder Bandshell

Apr. 19—Boulder Councilmember Adam Swetlik is part of the generation that switched from learning to "stop, drop and roll" during a fire to learning to "run, hide and fight" to evade an active shooter.

"You have to be aware that your life might end at any moment," he said Sunday at a gun safety rally at the Boulder Bandshell. "We learned that you just have to be in fear wherever you go."

Now that those in his generation are getting elected, he said, "something is changing." It's only a matter of time before there's a statewide or nationwide ban on assault style weapons, he said.

"There's no amount of money, no amount of political power, that will change our minds," he said. "We've grown up hiding in the dark in our classrooms waiting for somebody to come for us. It's our time to come for our elected officials."

Sunday's rally was organized by Blue Rising Together, a grassroots Colorado group focused on gun reform that was originally founded as a federal political action committee.

Annette Moore, a Blue Rising Together member, said legislators haven't done enough to combat gun violence following the March 22 mass shooting at King Soopers in Boulder. She urged the audience to pressure Gov. Jared Polis and state legislators to support a ban an assault weapons.

"We keep working for them and getting them elected, and they don't act," she said.

John Morse, a former president of the state Senate from Colorado Springs who was recalled in 2013 over his leadership in passing laws on magazine limits and gun background checks, said he wanted to dispel myths that have led to inaction.

His list included: The best way to deal with a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The real issue is mental health. Second Amendment rights must be protected by not passing any limits to gun ownership.

"The only way ever to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure he damn well never gets a gun in the first place," he said.

He also said bringing up mental health is a way to distract from the real issue, while calling most Second Amendment arguments "pure, unadulterated nonsense." The Second Amendment, he said, only conveys the right to have a handgun in your own home for defense.

"I've read the Constitution hundreds of times," he said. "There's not one word in it that you must bury your children so someone else can have an assault weapon."

He added that legislators saying there's not enough time left in the session to pass additional gun laws is an excuse, saying it only takes three days.

"We could pass an assault weapons ban by Thursday," he said before urging those in the crowd to hold elected officials accountable. "We need to make it such that, if you fail to vote for gun safety, you never win another election."

Other speakers included Boulder Mayor Sam Weaver; Maisha Fields, an advisor to Gov. Jared Polis; and Tim Hernández, an English teacher at North High School in Denver.

Weaver said called Boulder's 2018 citywide ban on assault-style weapons an important step, though not one that could make a big impact given it was passed in just one city. The King Soopers shooting also came just days after a district court judge ruled that Boulder doesn't have the legal authority to enforce the ban. The judge cited a 2003 state law that preempts local gun restrictions.

Weaver said the Legislature should "get out of the way" and let cities pass bans if lawmakers aren't willing to take that step.

"We have to act," he said.

Fields talked about the need to make gun violence a public health issue, including the need for more research on suicide. Her brother, Javad Fields, was shot and killed along with his fiance after he witnessed a murder.

"We all have to be on the same side," she said. "It has to matter to all of us."

Hernández said addressing gun violence also requires addressing police violence, telling the audience to talk to local leaders about the budget for police and how money could be better spent on community services.

"Gun violence is so much bigger than mass shootings," he said. "We need gun reform for police, too."

The Denver Post contributed to this report.