COLORADO AFTER COLUMBINE THE GUN DEBATE.

• Author: Soraghan, Mike
• Position: Brief Article

After a horrible tragedy, a state legislature with conservative Western roots rejected the notion of stronger gun control.

It's not often that legislators invite someone they'd like to put in jail to come testify before their committee.

But there stood Robyn Anderson, the young woman who had gone to the prom with columbine killer Dylan Klebold and provided him and fellow gunman Eric Harris three of the four guns they used to execute the worst school shooting in U.S. history. She stood before the House Judiciary Committee, sitting atop the high bench where the Colorado Supreme court used to sit, the star witness in the most searing gun control debate in the country.

She calmly recounted how she did "a favor for two friends," buying guns on their behalf at a local gun show because she was 18, and they weren't.

She explained how they went from table to table, seeking out "private sellers" who would not run a criminal background check on her. The paperwork required in a background check, she said, would have required her to give her name, and she didn't want to do that.

Anderson, a straight-A student who never went back to columbine High after the deadly rampage, came forward after the shootings and was questioned by investigators. Legislators repeatedly had said that she should be prosecuted for buying the guns. But federal and state prosecutors countered that it wasn't illegal for her to buy guns in a private sale, which doesn't require a background check.

But she told the committee there should have been a law.

"It was entirely too easy to purchase the guns, and something should be done," Anderson told the committee.

The killers left 12 students and one teacher dead in the suburban Denver school on April 20, 1999, before taking their own lives.

Anderson's testimony brought some of the reality of that day to legislators' doorsteps. But it couldn't convince them to change the law for gun shows.

Indeed, even after columbine made Colorado "ground zero" in the nation's gun debate, legislators in the home state of the massacre rejected the idea that the state needed stronger gun control. At the end of the legislative session--just two weeks after the one-year anniversary of Columbine--Colorado legislators had passed six bills relating to firearms. Half seek to protect gun owners.

Legislators adopted a measure to prohibit local governments from-filing negligence lawsuits against the gun industry, as did many other states. They approved a bill protecting people who want to drive across the state with guns in their cars and one that will keep secret the names of people who get government permission to carry concealed handguns. They approved bills to make "straw purchases" illegal, include juvenile records in background checks, and reinstate the state's background check for gun purchases.

WESTERN ROOTS, CONSERVATIVE CULTURE

Governor Bill Owens, a Republican elected just five months before the shootings with the support of the National Rifle Association, proposed a package of middle-of-the-road gun control measures in response to Columbine. But he couldn't muster the support in a legislature controlled by his fellow Republicans to pass most of it.

A state that has bucked the federal government's motorcycle helmet mandates and open container laws held true to its Western roots and its conservative political culture.

Nobody wears cowboy hats in the chambers, but bolo ties often replace the silken variety, and even the suburbanites chose western boots over dress shoes.

Majority Republicans' response was that gun control was not the answer to the shootings that took place only a few miles from where the legislature meets.

"As long as the Constitution says what it says, it won't matter if we put a thousand more gun laws on the books, it won't stop that kind of thing. We've got to prosecute the bad guys." said House Majority Leader Doug Dean.

Democrats, who received the governor's gun plan much more warmly, are angered by the lack of response, and say their GOP colleagues will pay for it at the ballot box in November.

"What Columbine did show is the accessibility of guns," said Colorado House Minority Leader Ken Gordon.

Gordon acknowledged that the gun control bills probably would not have stopped Columbine. But they say Columbine and the other school shootings across the country show the need for changes in the gun laws.

He compares it to policymaking during the Great Depression.

"Hoover's view was that the government should stay out of it, it would all work out. Roosevelt said, 'I don't know what we're going to do, but we're going to do something.'

"This crisis of people getting shot, well Republicans are saying, 'That just happens.' Democrats are saying, 'Let's try something."'

Gordon said the Columbine debate shows how effective lobbying, like that done by the National Rifle Association, can thwart the public will.

"I think the NRA's always going to be there," Gordon said. "Do-gooders like the gun control groups won't always be there. I don't think anybody's been punished for voting with the gun lobby, but they will be punished for voting against them."

But Colorado is no exception. Across the country, firearm bills met with little success this year, due in part to intense gridlock on the issue.

This year, more than 800 firearm-related bills were introduced, with a passage rate hovering around 10 percent. And most of the bills that reached a governor's desk were related to administrative matters, such as hunting licenses or the cost of concealed weapons permits. Only a handful concerned matters on the nightly news--trigger locks, background checks at guns shows and gun manufacturer liability.

A SURREAL DAY AT THE CAPITOL

On April 20, 1999, Colorado legislators were debating bills on the House floor when word started trickling in that something terrible was happening at a school in a Denver suburb.

Representative Don Lee, who represents the neighborhoods around Columbine and whose son attended the school, got a page from his wife. She told him there had been a shooting, but their son was safe.

Soon, legislators were glued to their televisions watching the surreal aerial footage of the school, filmed from helicopters. Some called home to check on their children, to make sure nothing had happened at other schools.

Lee went to the first floor, where Governor Bill Owens, some staff and Public Safety Chief Ari Zavaras were watching the events unfold on television and getting some updates from the field.

Owens would later go to Leawood Elementary School, near Columbine High School, where parents and students tried to find each other. Just a little more than three months into his first term, he was the spokesman for a state that suffered a tragedy being watched across the globe.

Asked that day about gun laws, Owens seemed ready to head off what seemed to be an inevitable call for more gun control, telling reporters as he stood at the school that "these killers broke every gun law in the book when they walked in today."

Owens had been at the center of a heated gun debate that had come to dominate the 1999 legislative session. With the first Republican in 24 years installed in the governor's office, GOP legislators had been eager to loosen the state's gun laws, making it easier for more Coloradans to carry concealed weapons and wiping out many local government restrictions on guns.

But news of the shooting had an immediate effect at the Capitol.

Even as students were fleeing the school, House Speaker Russ George started getting e-mail messages blaming the legislature for the massacre. Senator Norma Anderson, whose district includes Columbine, found that her voice mail had filled with anti-gun messages before the tragic afternoon ended.

The next day, the legislature, like the rest of Colorado and the nation, was reeling. All legislative work was cancelled for the day.

Dean and the sponsor of another pro-gun bill announced that they were withdrawing their bills, not because they were wrong, but because it was the wrong time to debate guns.

Representative Gary McPherson, the sponsor of the bill that would have eliminated many local gun laws, stressed that his bill "had nothing to do" with the shootings. "But this is an emotionally charged debate, and in deference to the families, this is not the time to have the debate."

Owens announced that he would veto a third bill that had already passed the legislature.

At the time of the shootings, there was little more than two weeks left in the session. Legislators, numbed by the tragedy, went about their work. Talking about guns was just too painful.

But a few months later, Owens surprised many when, as part of his response to Columbine, he proposed five "common sense restraints" on guns intended to keep them out of the hands of children and criminals. In a report issued jointly with Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar, Owens called on legislators to:

* Require criminal background checks on all sales at gun shows.

* Require safe storage and enforce criminal penalties on parents who store guns carelessly, if the gun winds up hurting someone or being used in a crime.

* Raise from 18 to 21 the minimum age for purchasing a handgun at a gun show (the minimum age is already 21 for purchases from a federally licensed dealer).

* Allow local police and prosecutors to enforce federal laws banning straw purchases on behalf of criminals or children (federal authorities can already prosecute such purchasers).

*...