National Review: Recall the 'Colorado 2'

A week from today, voters in Colorado will be offered the opportunity to recall two state senators who voted for increased gun control in the wake of the shootings at Newtown. We hope that they will take it.

Ripe for the chopping block are Angela Giron, of Pueblo, and senate president John Morse, of Colorado Springs. Both ignored the will of their constituents and pushed for limits on the size of magazines and the extension of background checks to private sales. Now they may lose their jobs.

Because the United States is not a direct democracy, the dismissal of public officials outside the healthy rhythm of regularly scheduled elections is a tool that should be used sparingly. Nevertheless, there remain certain circumstances in which the offenses committed are sufficiently grievous to render such an approach appropriate, which goes some way to explaining why the citizens of Colorado have felt provoked to call for the first recall elections in the state’s 137-year history.

As in New York and Connecticut, lawmakers in Colorado were aware that gun-control efforts benefit immensely from the unlovely combination of legislative haste and emotional rawness — and they leveraged both. During debate, swathes of law-enforcement officers went to the capital to argue against the proposals; they were turned away at the door. Women, many of whom had been the victims of sexual violence, assembled to add their input; they were treated with condescension and impatience — if they were called to speak at all. Citizens who had driven down from other parts of the state were so frustrated at being kept out of committee meetings in Denver that they drove around the capitol building for eight hours honking their horns. This was not, to borrow a favored chant of the Left, what democracy looks like.

Read the full story at National Review Online.