Former George W. Bush FEMA chief Michael Brown is calling for a massive demonstration in and around the Colorado state capitol building Monday to protest the gun control legislation making its way through the Democratic-controlled legislature.
Now an afternoon drive-time radio talk-show host in Denver, Brown took to the airwaves on Thursday and rallied his listeners to gridlock the streets around the capitol and blare their horns when the Senate considers seven different gun-control bills Monday morning.
He also wants Second Amendment supporters to “fill the building” in protest.
“Fill more than the hearing room, fill the entire building, floor by floor, so that the rotunda reverberates with the din of ordinary citizens showing their objection to the Colorado Democrats’ attack on the Constitution,” he wrote in a blog post Thursday.
“Second, everyone, throughout the day, should take time to slowly, maybe up to five miles per hour, drive around the capitol building with their car horns blaring. And blaring. And blaring.”
Brown has been vocal in his opposition to a slate of Democratic-sponsored bills that gun-rights advocates say strip them of their Second Amendment rights. Among them are measures that would ban high-capacity magazines, ban concealed weapons on campus, require universal background checks on all gun purchases, and hold owners, makers and sellers of assault weapons liable for any damage they may cause.
These and other gun control bills will be heard in committee Monday, and Brown said it’s now or never for opponents to have their voices heard.
“We always talk about this stuff, we bitch and moan about it, we know how bad it is,” he said in an interview. “People are looking for someone to tell them what to do.”
“There’s only one thing left to do and that’s show up and let them see you physically in person on Monday as they start this debate,” he said.
In calling for a demonstration, Brown referred to a 2001 tax protest in Tennessee in which protestors smashed windows at the capitol in Nashville and threw rocks the governor’s office.
While he emphasized that Monday’s protest should be loud but peaceful, Brown said the Tennessee protest was proof that such demonstrations can work. Lawmakers there abandoned the tax proposal.
“They literally just shut down the state capitol. It was so noisy (lawmakers) could barely hear what they were doing,” he said. “I don’t know if we can pull that off, but instead, it was more of an attempt to say to every group out there — Tea Party groups, gun groups, local party groups, whatever it is — ‘here’s something for you to do.’
“And Monday’s it. If you’re going to do it, you’d better do it now.”
Democrats hold a 20-15 majority in the Senate, requiring the defection of just three Democrats to kill any of the bills that make it out of the committees, assuming an otherwise party-line vote.
Brown is best known for being in charge of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. He said the experience helped reinforce his Second Amendment views, after witnessing “the total and complete breakdown” of local police forces, making individual self-defense all the more necessary.
Brown emphasized that he’s not leading or organizing whatever protest might occur Monday, just hoping to serve as a catalyst for action.
“I know people are frustrated and they feel like there’s nothing they can do,” he said. “This may have no effect whatsoever, but if nothing else, they have now participated in our democratic republic.”
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