There was jubilation on the west steps of the Colorado state Capitol Friday morning as Gov. Jared Polis signed into law four new gun control bills. It’s a day Tom Mauser has been working for more than two decades.
“Twenty-four years to be exact,” he said.
His son Daniel was killed in the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. Days later Tom started his fight for gun control at the anti-NRA protest held on the same capital steps in 1999.
“If they feel that guns had nothing to do with this, why should they not be meeting here?” he said in 1999 as he spoke to a crowd of nearly 10,000 people.
He says at that moment he had a lot of support, but as the years went on things slowly changed.
“At our rallies, the numbers went down and down,” said Mauser.
He says with the increase in mass shootings lately, his crusade has gained momentum which helped get these new laws passed. So, while he still has more to accomplish, at least for now he can take a small sigh of relief
“It’s great to just feel the hope,” Mauser said.
But Mauser’s fight is not over. The group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners has vowed to fight the laws in court.
“It’s the Bill of Rights not the bill of needs where our rights are constitutionally guaranteed,” said Taylor Rhodes the Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners.
“As soon as the pen hit the paper… I don’t even think the ink was dry. We filed our lawsuits,” Rhodes added.
Mauser is up for the challenge, “None of them confiscate people’s weapons. If you’re a law-abiding citizen you can still purchase weapons you can still protect yourself.”
He adds, “When you have 400 million guns like we do in the U.S., we’re going to continue having a problem.”