Over the months following my speech at the NRA protest and at the While House, the interviews and events increased and were very taxing. I was trying to work, give time to my family and advocate for change. In the summer of 1999 a new, bipartisan nonprofit organization, SAFE Colorado, was formed for the purpose of lobbying for stronger gun laws.
One great thing about SAFE was that its board of directors was bipartisan, consisting of three Democrats and three Republicans—something that would be much tougher to pull off in today’s hyper partisan environment. SAFE also had four former Colorado governors as honorary chairmen—two Democrats and two Republicans.
meeting Jim Brady…
In November, they asked if I would be willing to serve as their lobbyist in the 2000 legislative session. I agreed to do so after I was granted a one-year leave of absence from my job as a grants manager at the Colorado Department of Transportation.
Honored for Action
Not long after I began my lobbying work, in January 2000, I was invited by the White House to attend President Bill Clinton’s final State of the Union speech. How could I say no? I attended, and as I sat in the gallery of the House, just a few feet away from First Lady Hillary Clinton, I was so touched when he mentioned Daniel’s name to the country, saying he was a great kid, a straight A student. What an amazing moment. And he commended me for turning my grief into action. And, to top it off, I sat directly behind, and spoke to, the great Hank Aaron!
Closing the Gun Show Loophole
In December of 1998, the Columbine killers went to the Tanner Gun Show. They were only 17, so they took an 18-year old friend, Robyn Anderson, to make the purchase. Firearms at gun shows are sold by both licensed dealers and private (unlicensed) sellers. The killers were aware that private sellers were not required to conduct background checks of customers. That’s where they went, to stay under the radar, with no paper trail. They were the ones who asked the questions and checked out the weapons, not Anderson. Anderson bought three of the four guns the killers used at Columbine. Their weapons were purchased through the so-called gun show loophole–one of the loopholes in the Brady Bill that Daniel had mentioned to me just two weeks before he was killed.
For three months I lobbied for passage of five particular gun control bills. Unfortunately, they were dead upon arrival in the legislature, where the NRA-controlled Republicans held the majority. In response to the legislature’s failure to pass these bills, SAFE Colorado decided to put the most important of those bills on the November 2000 ballot for the voters to decide. That voter initiative, Amendment 22, was designed to close the “gun show loophole.”
Amendment 22 required that ALL attempted firearm purchases at a gun show had to go through a background check. SAFE Colorado had to collect more than 62,000 valid signatures on petitions to get on the November ballot. We obtained over 110,00! And we did it using only volunteers to collect the signatures–over 2,000 of them!
in November 2000. We held a rally, then march all the petitions to the
office of the Colorado Secretary of State.
Along the way the gun lobby challenged Amendment 22 in a number of courts–but they lost every single legal challenge. Amendment 22 passed overwhelmingly–70% to 30%! On election night, at the victory party, I wore Daniel’s tennis shoes–to symbolize that I was doing this work in Daniel’s name. My speech that night can be found here on YouTube.
Continued Activism
After the passage of Amendment 22, I returned to my job but continued my activism. I have served on the volunteer board of directors of Colorado Ceasefire Legislative Action, a group that lobbies for stronger gun laws. At different times I have served as board president, spokesman and secretary. I also have made numerous public presentations and conducted countless media interviews.
After passage of Amendment 22, the gun lobby maintained its grip on our legislature and passed a bill loosening rules on concealed weapons permits. Then, for a number of years, we and the gun lobby operated at a draw—neither side got any bills passed. But then, in 2013, following the mass shootings in the Aurora theater and Sandy Hook Elementary, the legislature passed three significant gun reform bills, with strong lobbying by Colorado Ceasefire:
- A ban on high capacity magazines (a limit of 15 bullets)
- A Universal Background Check bill that requires a background check on ALL gun sales
- A bill requiring stronger efforts to require domestic abusers to surrender their firearms.
and ask what more needed to be done. I was among those there to speak.
A few years later, other significant bills were passed, including:
- A law requiring safe storage of firearms
- A three-day waiting period for the obtaining of a firearm after purchase
- A bill prohibiting the sale of guns for 5 years to anyone convicted of a violent misdemeanor
- Raising the age for the purchase of a long gun from 18 to 21
- The creation of a state Office of Gun Violence Prevention
- And, especially significant to me, an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) law, also known as the “red flag” law, that allows qualified persons to request the court to temporarily remove firearms from persons deemed to be a danger to themselves or others
Daniel Mauser Memorial Website 