By Larry Keane, National Shooting Sports Foundation
Like Members of Congress, state legislators are elected to represent their constituents and vote on the laws that affect them. When legislators fail to represent the will and beliefs of their constituents and become beholden to outside influences, it is up to their constituents to fire them.
This is exactly what’s happening in Colorado with State Senate Majority leader John Morse facing a recall election starting on Aug. 20. Sen. Morse forgot about his constituents who elected him when he started taking his legislative orders from Mayor Bloomberg and the Brady Campaign, hastily ushering through a series of anti-gun laws in the wake of the tragedies in Aurora and Newtown.
Morse was instrumental in passing harsh new restrictions on his constituents’ Second Amendment rights, including magazine limits – the latter of which has prompted manufacturer Magpul to move its facilities out of state – in opposition to the will of gun owners in his district.
John Morse deserves to be recalled, not just because he led the passage of anti-gun legislation affecting legal gun owners and infringing on the Second Amendment rights of Coloradoans, but because he acted against the wishes of the constituents he was elected to represent. In doing so, he has shown amazing hubris by blatantly admitting that he believes he knows better than his constituents. He is quoted as having said in the New York Times, “There may be a cost for me to pay, but I am more than happy to pay it,” implying that he needed to make these decisions for his constituents because they weren’t smart enough to make them on their own.
And we now know that Morse admits that he knew the anti-gun laws would be unpopular with his constituents. We know this because in his campaign to avoid recall, his main campaign strategy has been to avoid talking about the gun laws he so proudly passed. Through these statements, he has shown his true colors and confessed to intentionally ignoring the will of his constituents to push through his and Mayor Bloomberg’s anti-gun agenda.
The grounds for his recall cannot be denied, but that does not mean it is a sure thing. Any recall is an uphill battle and success is rare, especially in a swing district that has recently elected both Republicans and Democrats. To make matters worse, the Morse recall effort is a local operation but faced well-funded national opposition from outside the state. Bloomberg’s New York City staff are heavily involved in anti-gun operations around the country as a recent Free Republic article noted, “Bloomberg staffer John McCarthy defended the arrangement, saying ‘The Mayor’s top priority is keeping New Yorkers safe and that includes seeking sane gun laws in other states and D.C. to help reduce the flow of illegal guns to New York.’”
Perhaps foreseeing the consequences of his cavalier attitude toward his constituents, Morse himself helped push through legislation that would help him in case of a recall. He changed the voting rules in Colorado to allow anyone in the state to vote in his district. This enabled Bloomberg and the Democrat’s national operation to drive votes by non-constituents in Morse’s district and outnumber his actual constituents who want to recall him.
It’s obvious that Sen. Morse holds his constituents in low regard and sees his job as senate majority leader as a means to push the gun-control agenda he shares with the billionaire mayor from the east coast, rather than listen to those who elect him. If ever there was a case for recall, this is it. Too bad the senator is changing the rules mid-game to fix the election to try and guarantee his job against the will of his constituents.
