During a town hall in his Colorado district Tuesday night, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) faced a barrage of questions about gun control in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Florida last week.
During a moment of silence for the victims of the shooting, several attendees called for action on gun control instead of prayers.
“We’re done with thoughts and prayers!” one audience member yelled out during the moment of silence, according to the Associated Press.
Dozens at town hall held by Rep. Mike Coffman refuse to honor a requested moment of silence for shooting victims of #ParklandShooting. Several shout they are "sick and tired of thoughts and prayers." pic.twitter.com/ELijMDPouq
— Rob McClure ?? (@RobCBS4) February 21, 2018
Attendees held signs related to gun control, including one that noted the National Rifle Association’s contributions to Coffman’s campaign. And several audience members asked the congressman about gun control efforts — his district includes the town of Aurora, the site of a deadly 2012 shooting at a movie theater.
One woman asked him how he would work to keep weapons like the AR-15 out of civilian hands. Another woman identified herself as the wife of a first responder who was at the scene of the Columbine high school shooting, also in Colorado. She told Coffman that a 19-year-old should not be able to buy a “weapon of mass destruction.”
In response, Coffman said that laws won’t necessarily stop the next tragedy.
Watch clips from the town hall via Fox 31 in Denver:
Keep up the heat. That’s the only thing they understand.
“New laws won’t necessarily”—that is, the only measures acceptable to take are unicornlike perfect solutions with no inconveniences for anyone—only works for people who want to believe it, numbnuts. It sounds pretty thin to people who actually want to address the problem.
And I may begin a little crusade of my own. It’s bugged me for years to hear a mass killing described as a “tragedy.” It’s an atrocity. Let’s call it that.
True, just as laws won’t stop the next murder, either.
So what?
Perhaps we should start taking out metal detectors from entrances to public buildings like legislative chambers. Just saying.
I work at a courthouse and have to go through full airport screenings daily (although I do have unfettered access to the building on weekends).
It is a response that has worked for the GOP for decades. A grain of truth (no one law will stop every incident) - that allows time to go by, the issue to drop, until the next massacre.
But this time… in this space where people have been showing up to town halls on a myriad of issues … it sounds hollow (as do the other trite GOP catch phrases to selling each toxic policy) to more and more of the audience. Folks outside of the conservative/political/religio-political bubble - seem to be more willing to listen and discern the trite, toxic excuses that sound like hot air.
I think this atrocity, and the response by the kids, in this period of more woke-ness, may have just spiked up the altitude of the coming Blue Wave.