Guns, gays, drugs and taxes in Colorado

WHEN Colorado’s legislators debated gun control earlier this year the Centennial Gun Store, a firearms wonderland in the Denver suburbs, became a “complete zoo”, says Paul Stanley, one of its managers. Gun fans who feared for their Second-Amendment rights cleared a shop wall of assault rifles. Suburban types who had never owned a gun flocked to the shop because “they didn’t want the government telling them what to do.” Ladies’ night at the firing range was booked solid.

In the end the Democratic-run legislature passed several gun laws, including a tightening of background checks and a ban on magazines that hold more than 15 rounds. That, in a libertarian-minded western state, generated more recoil than an antique Enfield. Outraged gun-lovers gathered signatures to recall four legislators who had backed the new laws. Two of the bids, against John Morse, the president of the state Senate, in Colorado Springs and Angela Giron in Pueblo, were successful, and on September 10th voters in those districts will be asked if they want to boot their state senators from office.