Gun-rights activists won a major victory this week after two Colorado Democrats who helped push through a package of tough new gun-control laws were ousted in a historic recall vote. State Senate President John Morse and state Sen. Angela Giron were both defeated in the state’s first-ever recall effort, which served as a referendum on their support for legislation banning magazines with more than 15 rounds and requiring background checks on private gun sales. The National Rifle Association, which spent $500,000 on the campaign, said the vote was a rebuke of “anti-gun billionaires”—a swipe at New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave $350,000 to the anti-recall campaign. Morse said the laws, passed in the wake of last year’s mass shooting in Aurora, Colo., had made the state a safer place. “If it cost me my political career,” he said, “that’s a small price to pay.”
Can we declare gun control dead now? said Charles Cooke in NationalReview.com. “Colorado was supposed to be the blueprint for other ‘purple’ states.” If magazine limits and background checks could be implemented there, anti-gun campaigners claimed, then why not in Pennsylvania or Nevada? “Now it will presumably be difficult to convince state legislatures in other parts of the country to touch the question of guns.”
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But the tremors sent out by this vote will be felt in Washington, said Zachary Roth in MSNBC.com. While polls show that modest gun-control measures are broadly popular, Colorado proves that the NRA can still capitalize on the intensity of gun-rights supporters to punish lawmakers who step out of line. The next time Congress considers federal gun laws, every swing-state member will think about the fate of Morse and Giron.