By Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
While most Americans will be chillin' out, maxin' and
relaxin' this Labor Day weekend, dedicated patriots in Colorado are hard at
work preparing for a groundbreaking special election day with nationwide
repercussions. George Washington would be proud.
On September 10, Democratic legislator and state Senate
President John Morse of Colorado Springs faces a citizen recall for his sellout
to New York anti-gun special interests, for his betrayal of transparency and
accountability to constituents, and for his destructive economic policies that
are driving thousands of jobs away. Also up for recall: Democratic legislator
Angela Giron of Pueblo.
In March, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed his
left-wing colleagues' sweeping package of gun- and ammo-control measures --
pushed not by Coloradans, but by gun-grabbing New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, the anti-Second Amendment Brady bunch and the White House. Vice
President Joe Biden inserted himself into my adopted home state's legislative
process, phoning up swing Democratic legislators to lobby for the bills
personally.
These radically expanded background checks on every
individual gun sale and ammunitions restrictions banning the purchase or
transfer of magazines with more than 15 cartridges will do little to nothing to
prevent the next Newtown or Aurora or Columbine. "Moderate"
Hickenlooper publicly admitted their ineffectiveness before surrendering to the
gun-control zealots.
Morse and Giron also posed as middle-of-the-roaders. But
there's nothing moderate about gun-control laws that demonize law-abiding gun
owners. While Morse brags of his time as a police officer in Colorado Springs,
his brethren in the Colorado Springs Police Protective Association have
condemned him and support his recall. One of Morse's extremist proposals,
backed by Bloomberg and company, would have made firearms owners, sellers and
manufacturers legally liable for any crimes committed with guns. He was forced
to back down on that one.
There's also nothing moderate about marginalizing
tax-paying, job-creating gun and ammo manufacturers. The
Morse-Hickenlooper-Bloomberg-Biden laws have already forced Colorado-based
Magpul Industries and other manufacturers to abandon the state -- and take
thousands of related jobs with them. As I reported earlier this year, Magpul
alone fueled 600 jobs and an estimated $85 million in spending in the state.
Overall, as the National Shooting Sports Foundation found, "The firearms
and ammunition industry was responsible for as much as $31.84 billion in total
economic activity in the country ... (and) the industry and its employees pay
over $2.07 billion in taxes including property, income and sales based
levies."
At a local fundraiser in Colorado Springs (which I
supported and spoke at), Morse's GOP challenger and Air Force veteran Bernie
Herpin hammered the incumbent over his economic destruction and contempt for
the will of the people. "I'm running to defend our Constitutional rights
and promote an environment where small businesses are free to create jobs and
improve our local community," Herpin says, while Morse's agenda is
"doing the bidding of big-government interests in Denver and
Washington."
And New York City. On Tuesday, insatiable control freak
Bloomberg tossed in $350,000 to a pass-through committee established less than
a month ago to fund the anti-gun Democratic recall targets.
Recall leader Rob Harris, a Colorado Springs resident in
Morse's Senate District 11, explains that he was just an ordinary citizen
"fed up" with the overlords in Denver. No outside groups contacted
him. He had no ties to Republican groups or strategists. Harris was incensed
that his representative refused to respond to his emails and to the concerns of
his neighbors (an arrogant move that Morse even bragged about on far-left MSNBC
host Rachel Maddow's show).
Through hard work and local activism, the grassroots
campaign gathered 16,000 signatures in three months to qualify the recall for
the ballot. Morse "changed state Senate committee rules, which effectively
silenced the voices of hundreds of Colorado citizens from testifying on
legislation" affecting them, Harris points out. While Democrats made room
for out-of-state astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of former Arizona congresswoman
and Tucson shooting survivor Gabby Giffords, to testify before the legislature,
the majority Dems manipulated the process so that untold numbers of Colorado
residents who support the Second Amendment were frozen out.
In his new No. 1 New York Times bestseller, "The
Liberty Amendments," Mark Levin calls for citizen activists to use the
tools and principles the Founding Fathers bestowed upon us to restore the
balance of power back to "we, the people." The spirit of George
Washington animates the important battle here in Colorado. As Washington wrote
to his nephew in 1787:
"The power under the Constitution will always be in
the people. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain
limited period, to representatives of their own choosing; and whenever it is
executed contrary to their interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their
servants can, and undoubtedly will, be recalled."
The recalls are a historic David and anti-gun Goliath
showdown -- and my fellow Colorado Springs citizens know the stakes are high.
This isn't a "single issue" election about guns. It's about electoral
accountability, economic prosperity, personal security and self-government. The
single issue encompassing them all: freedom.
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