FTA: Colorado voters have a history of recalling representatives who choose to support gun control. In response to the mass killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and the Aurora theater shooting, state representatives pushed forward an unpopular gun control package statewide.
Two senators including the Senate President John Morse were recalled in 2013 after passing the gun control laws and a third lawmaker stepped down before she could also be recalled.
A Colorado state representative is facing a recall after sponsoring a controversial gun control bill recently signed into law. Tom Sullivan (D) of the city of Aurora, a suburb of Denver, is the target of the petition.
Sullivan sponsored a red flag bill that would allow law enforcement, medical professionals, family members, roommates, spouses and ex-spouses to file an extreme risk protection order in court against an individual without notifying the individual that authorities will search his home and seize his guns.
Second Amendment and civil rights supporters argued that the law makes an end-run around due process and doesn’t include a two-step process in the seizure order. Gun control proponents argued that because a judge is involved there isn’t a lack of due process, even if the individual subject to the warrant isn’t involved in the hearing.
They argued that it is in the state’s interest to keep the person out of the loop since they could take that as notice and become a danger to themselves or others including the police confiscating the guns.
The Colorado Secretary of State approved the petition to recall Sullivan early this week. The organizers need 10,035 signatures by mid-July in order for the recall to go to the ballot.
Sullivan sponsored the red flag bill in memory of his son, Alex, who was killed in the Aurora theater shooting in 2012. The bill, signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis (D), goes into effect in 2020.
by Max Slowik
