Gun rights organizations exist to protect gun rights. How they do it is up for debate, of course, because there are different approaches. Some people join multiple gun rights groups because they value the different approaches.
But they all exist to protect gun rights, and generally nothing else, which makes the attacks on Rocky Mountain Gun Owners so insane.
It's not that they're defending gun rights; that's the problem. It's that they're doing it, at least in part, by holding Republicans accountable, too.
Every year, RMGO reliably singles out a Republican lawmaker they consider insufficiently committed to their cause, which is opposition to any form of gun control, including basic background checks for gun purchases that have been settled law for decades. Last year RMGO’s hostility toward one of the most ostentatiously pro-gun Republicans in the Colorado House, Rep. Ryan Armagost, was one of several factors that drove Armagost from office under a cloud.
This year, it’s GOP Rep. Anthony Hartsook of Douglas County taking RMGO’s friendly fire:
Colorado’s anti-gun laws are usually sponsored by Democrat Legislators.
Unfortunately, sometimes Republicans sponsor a bill that also negatively affects our gun rights.
That’s the case with Rep. Anthony Hartsook, who sponsored two bills this year that have negative implications for our Right to Self-Defense.
HB26-1108: Colorado Bureau of Investigation Access Federal Fingerprint Search Service would have sent the fingerprints of every concealed carry permit holder in Colorado to the FBI in a permanent database.
And HB26-1302: Colorado Bureau of Investigation Firearms InstaCheck Unit Operating Hours which allows the CBI to potentially delay the processing of background checks for Coloradans attempting to legally purchase a firearm.
Rep. Hartsook is a sponsor on both of these bad bills!
RMGO is circulating a video clip (click above right) that purports to depict their “lobbyist” being kicked out of the Colorado House lobby by an obviously angry Rep. Hartsook. The two bills in question that Hartsook has co-sponsored are hardly what you’d call major gun control bills, one joining an existing FBI fingerprint program and the other largely a budget measure to allow the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to set its own hours for approving gun background checks–much less of a big deal now that the state has a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases.
This is the same publication that accused RMGO of being the anti-gun Democrats' "best friend" a short time ago.
So, what we've got here is a gun rights group that, in part, proves they're about gun rights and not just Republican yes men by going after Republicans who offer up bills that are anti-gun in some way. I don't know that Hartsook meant them to be anti-gun, but there's an impact for gun owners, and one that potentially goes behind the brush-off that Colorado Pols tries to give it.
The problem, though, isn't that RMGO is ideologically consistent; it's that they're not just shutting up and toeing the GOP line like good little foot soldiers.
Yet, the question then becomes, what good does toeing the line do if people ostensibly on our own side won't toe the line with us?
Sen. John Cornyn didn't seem all that concerned about his political future when it came to supporting the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, now did he? He's running for re-election and doesn't think he did anything that should have upset gun-owning Texans.
It's not like RMGO is ignoring the anti-gunners. They're fighting against every bit of gun control being introduced, and they're not going to win any friends by trying to play nice with the group that wants to strip the Second Amendment down to nothing.
Whoever runs Colorado Pols has got it bad for RMGO, but considering that Colorado Pols is a leftist site, what it really says is that whoever this is really doesn't like how RMGO won't bend the knee to them.
What he or she wants is for the pro-gun side to be less pro-gun, be more milquetoast in their defense of the Second Amendment, and just be compliant in their hands like a wad of clay.
If RMGO is RINO hunting, as the author claims, and that's a problem, maybe it's because the RINOs are the best friends of the anti-gunners who run the state, and not RMGO.
