Proposition KK would charge a new 6.5% excise tax on the manufacture and sale of firearms and ammunition. The tax would be imposed on firearms dealers, manufacturers, and ammunition vendors. The revenue would go to a new fund called the Firearms and Ammunition Excise Tax Cash Fund and would be used to fund criminal victim services programs, mental and behavioral health programs for kids and veterans and school security and safety programs.
A “yes” vote approves the new tax. A “no” vote opposes creation of the new tax.
Prop. KK is expected to generate up to $39 million the first full year it goes into effect.
For the first time the U.S. Surgeon General of the United States has issued an urgent warning about gun violence in America, calling it a public health crisis.
Dr. Vivek Murthy says that in 2020, firearm‑related injuries became the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the U.S., surpassing motor vehicle crashes, cancer, and drug overdose and poisoning. He further says that almost 6 in 10 U.S. adults say that they worry “sometimes,” “almost every day,” or “every day,” about a loved one being a victim of firearm violence, and that such high levels of exposure to firearm violence for both children and adults in the U.S. “give rise to a cycle of trauma and fear within our communities, contributing to the nation’s mental health crisis.”
Elected officials who feel the weight of this moral crisis of inaction on the issue of firearm violence in the U.S. and want to know what policies actually work to reduce firearm injuries and deaths, and which don’t, can access this report by the Rand Corporation, updated in 2023, that analyzes the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of a wide range of gun policies, and makes recommendations for the most effective policies to implement.
If you know of someone who possesses firearms and is posing a risk to themselves or others, you can access instructions on how to access Colorado’s Red Flag law in Mesa County here.
A highly experienced School District 51 employee who came here from the front range with over 20 years experience in conducting lockdown drills in other school districts is raising red flags about the way D-51 conducts its lockdown drills, and the trauma it is causing students. The employee describes a heartbreaking experience during a lockdown drill with a room full of kindergarteners during the 2023-2024 school year and the lasting effects it had on students. The employee has brought the problem up with school counselors, the D-51 School Board and Tim Leon, Director of Safety and Security for District 51, and even proposed different ways to conduct these drills that are used in other school districts that don’t traumatize students the way D-51’s drills do, and offered research by the National Association of School Psychologists on how to mitigate the negative psychological effects that lockdown drills have on young kids, but the employee’s urgings have been ignored at every turn.
This is the debut video of the group “Mothers for Democracy,” a grassroots group that started as a protest group of Texas mothers who oppose Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s extreme agenda.
Advocates for Moms Demand Action, a gun violence prevention group, handed Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-CO) a pin on July 18 honoring 10-year old Maite Rodriguez, one of 19 children massacred in the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022.
Boebert promptly walked to a trash can with the pin and flier explaining its significance and tossed it into the can, right in front of the people who had handed it to her.
The League of Women Voters and Grand Valley Interfaith network will be co-sponsoring a free talk, “Understanding Colorado’s Red Flag Law,” on Monday, May 22, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 536 Ouray Ave. The featured speaker will be Tom Mauser of Colorado Ceasefire, whose son, Daniel Mauser, was murdered in the Columbine High School shooting on April 20, 1999.
Lauren Boebert grinning in her vile T-shirt making fun of an accidental shooting death on a movie set
In the days after the tragic October, 2021 accidental shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins by Alec Baldwin while he was rehearsing a scene with a prop gun on the set of his movie, Rust, Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert relentlessly spewed vile, unconscionable jokes about the incident at Baldwin’s expense.
Boebert grinned as she wore a creepy T-shirt joking about the tragedy while out shopping.
Screen shot from Ranger Mitchell’s body camera showing the moment he shot Gage Lorentz point-blank in the chest after pulling him over for speeding on a dirt road in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Lorentz was unarmed, unintoxicated and alone at the time.
Gage Lorentz, a graduate of Fruita Monument High School, was murdered on March 21, 2020, by a law enforcement officer while heading home to Montrose. He was driving home alone on an isolated back road in Carlsbad Caverns National Park to see his family after working for weeks on a drilling rig in the outskirts of Pecos, Texas.
National Park Ranger Robert Mitchell pulled Gage over for speeding on a dirt road inside the Park. Gage was alone, unarmed, unintoxicated and followed all of Mitchell’s orders until he ordered Gage to turn around and put his back to him. At that point, Gage refused to comply. The officer’s body camera video shows that seconds later, Mitchell had pinned Gage to the ground, was on top of him and shot him, point-blank, in the chest, killing him.
In late May 2022, Oklahoma once again passed the nation’s worst abortion ban, making it the first state to effectively end women’s right to have an abortion, and making this article, that I first published on May 20, 2019, even more relevant.
Oklahoma Republicans just passed a mind-blowingly strict law that makes abortion illegal in virtually every circumstance, effectively terminating the right of women in the state to control their own bodies and reproductive fate.
Republicans base these laws on their belief that a fetus is a fully legal person entitled to all the rights and privileges that all legal American citizens enjoy.
But if actually put into effect, what do these beliefs really portend for life in America?
The national student-led group March For Our Lives will hold a local rally Saturday, June 11, from 10:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m. at the Old Mesa County Courthouse at 6th and Rood to demand legislators enact policy measures to reduce the epidemic of gun massacres now gripping America. The rally will feature local youth and adult speakers and a march through downtown Grand Junction and more.
In a video taken last September, House Rep. Lauren Boebert says the U.S. is undergoing “replacement theory,” the white supremacist ideology behind an 18-year old’s gun massacre of ten Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York on Saturday, March 14, 2022. Payton Gendron, the shooter, left behind a 180-page manifesto that showed he was fixated on the conspiracy theory that White people in the U.S. are being intentionally replaced — the same idea Boebert spouts in this video.
Halayna Hutchins, a 42 year old cinematographer killed by the accidental discharge of a firearm on a New Mexico film set. She left behind a husband and 9 year old son. (Photo: Instagram)
Denver news anchor Kyle Clark in a commentary November 17 on his show “Next, with Kyle Clark” said journalists are holding Republican Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert to a lower standard than every other legislator because:
“If we held her to the same standard as every other elected Republican and Democrat in Colorado, we would be here near nightly chronicling the cruel, false, and bigoted things that Boebert says for attention and fundraising.”
So in an attempt to keep up with Rep. Boebert’s avalanche of cruel and vile behavior in the name of fundraising, here’s a recent one for you, and it’s about as cruel as you can get:
The Mesa County Workforce Center prohibits weapons on its grounds.
Mesa County citizens volunteering as election judges were shocked to see others show up at their training session at the Workforce Center armed with guns. One volunteer, P.G., reported, “A guy walked into the Monday training with a gun on his hip, and the people giving the training didn’t say anything, even though I raised the issue.”
The volunteer felt bringing deadly weapons to an elections training was inappropriate and intimidating, and contacted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, but Peters said she couldn’t do anything, saying “They’re allowed to do it.” Peters further stated that firearms are okay because “we are an open-carry state.” P.G. felt Clerk Peters should have informed election volunteers that they are attending the training as election judges, and not policemen, and should leave their guns at home.
The Mesa County Workforce’s website also says “No weapons are permitted on the premises,” but the trainer told P.G. that the Workforce Center did not prohibit carrying weapons.
The Colorado Times Recorder is reporting that Republican Congressional candidate for District 3, Lauren Boebert, likely committed a criminal offense in 2015 when she required an underage employee to carry a firearm in her diner. Boebert and her husband own Shooters Grill, an eatery in Rifle, Colorado whose attention-getting business gimmick is requiring all employees to open-carry handguns.
Boebert’s alleged firearm offense was documented in a January, 2015 YouTube video about the diner which included a clip in which the young employee, Brooke Shackleford, admits she is just 17 years old and open carries a firearm inside Boebert’s restaurant while she works.
Under Colorado Revised Statutes 18-12-108.7 it is illegal to allow a juvenile to possess a handgun, and whoever does so commits a Class 4 felony, punishable by fines ranging from $2,000 to $500,000 and 2 to 6 years in prison.
Other Class 4 felonies include crimes of sexual assault, manslaughter, vehicular homicide, and identity theft.
In May, 2020, Lauren Boebert, the Republican candidate for House Representative in the 3rd Congressional District (our district), was a guest on an online right wing political talk show called “Steel Truth” hosted by Ann Vandersteel.
Gage Lorentz, 26, was killed by National Park Ranger Robert Mitchell during a traffic stop for speeding on a dirt road in Carlsbad Caverns National Park March 21. Gage was unarmed and had no alcohol or drugs in his system at the time he was fatally shot. The family is calling for the arrest and prosecution of the park ranger who murdered him.
Police murdering unarmed citizens in cold blood doesn’t just happen to people from other places.
A National Park Ranger murdered a young Fruita man last March in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, as he was headed home to Fruita from Texas.
The murder was covered locally in March, but has taken on renewed significance after George Floyd’s brutal murder in Minneapolis shined a spotlight on the unchecked police brutality going on all across the nation.
Gage Lorentz was unarmed and had no drugs or alcohol in his system when he was pulled over for going too fast on a dirt road.
In this video clip taken at a recent City Council meeting, Grand Junction City Councilor Phil Pe’a complains that he wasn’t given enough notice that there might be protesters at a public meeting. He said he was alarmed when he got to City Hall and saw a police presence along with protesters. When City Councilor Anna Stout told Mr. Pe’a that City Manager Greg Caton had emailed all Council members to let them know protesters were expected at that evening’s meeting, Mr. Pe’a said “I have a full time job. I don’t have time to visit my email constantly.” He said he would have preferred a phone call, and continued, saying
“I didn’t know whether I had to bring my Glock into the meeting or not. That’s how serious it was, Anna.”
Proposition KK would charge a new 6.5% excise tax on the manufacture and sale of firearms and ammunition. The tax would be imposed on firearms dealers, manufacturers, and ammunition vendors. The revenue would go to a new fund called the Firearms and Ammunition Excise Tax Cash Fund and would be used to fund criminal victim services programs, mental and behavioral health programs for kids and veterans and school security and safety programs.
In late May 2022, Oklahoma once again passed 
