basquebromance
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Beto O’Rourke’s Campaign Found New Meaning in the Gun Debate. But Is He Hurting the Cause?
from the article:
"Tom Sullivan, a Colorado state lawmaker whose son, Alex, was killed in the Aurora theater shooting in 2012, met Beto O’Rourke one cloudless morning in September and, inside a glass-and-brick office building in downtown Denver, introduced him to several other people whose friends or relatives had been killed in mass shootings.
They were seated at a table in a third-floor conference room of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, beside a largely untouched basket of bagels and a box of Starbucks coffee. Jane Dougherty, whose sister Mary Sherlach was murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, brought up the moment, at a presidential debate in Houston the previous week, when O’Rourke had said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
“I think I was jumping around in my family room, because my sister was murdered by an AR-15,” Dougherty said.
Coni Sanders, whose father, Dave, was killed in the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, where he was a teacher, said she had rushed toward the television in her living room, hurting her head on a door jamb before sitting down on the floor and watching in disbelief. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Sanders said. Brandon Kellogg, a student at Columbine during the massacre, said that, sitting on his couch watching the debate that night, he cried.
O’Rourke swallowed.
Lonnie Phillips, whose daughter was killed in Aurora, told O’Rourke that he had “stepped in shit.”
“They’re going to come after you,” Phillips said, while assuring O’Rourke that he has “an army behind you.”
“You don’t back down,” he added.
O’Rourke no longer owns a gun, but he grew up around them in West Texas. He told me his father, Pat, kept a handgun in his sock drawer and an inherited “arsenal” of handguns, shotguns and rifles in a basement closet. O’Rourke used to take a .22-caliber rifle into the desert to shoot bottles and cans, and he has gone hunting with friends.
Early in his near-miss Senate run against Ted Cruz last year, a friend advised O’Rourke to “make sure that you’re seen in church every Sunday, make sure that they get a picture of you wearing boots and carrying a gun around,” O’Rourke said. “And I was just like, you know what, none of that is me. I don’t go to church every Sunday. I don’t carry a gun. I don’t have a gun.”
from the article:
"Tom Sullivan, a Colorado state lawmaker whose son, Alex, was killed in the Aurora theater shooting in 2012, met Beto O’Rourke one cloudless morning in September and, inside a glass-and-brick office building in downtown Denver, introduced him to several other people whose friends or relatives had been killed in mass shootings.
They were seated at a table in a third-floor conference room of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, beside a largely untouched basket of bagels and a box of Starbucks coffee. Jane Dougherty, whose sister Mary Sherlach was murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, brought up the moment, at a presidential debate in Houston the previous week, when O’Rourke had said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
“I think I was jumping around in my family room, because my sister was murdered by an AR-15,” Dougherty said.
Coni Sanders, whose father, Dave, was killed in the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, where he was a teacher, said she had rushed toward the television in her living room, hurting her head on a door jamb before sitting down on the floor and watching in disbelief. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Sanders said. Brandon Kellogg, a student at Columbine during the massacre, said that, sitting on his couch watching the debate that night, he cried.
O’Rourke swallowed.
Lonnie Phillips, whose daughter was killed in Aurora, told O’Rourke that he had “stepped in shit.”
“They’re going to come after you,” Phillips said, while assuring O’Rourke that he has “an army behind you.”
“You don’t back down,” he added.
O’Rourke no longer owns a gun, but he grew up around them in West Texas. He told me his father, Pat, kept a handgun in his sock drawer and an inherited “arsenal” of handguns, shotguns and rifles in a basement closet. O’Rourke used to take a .22-caliber rifle into the desert to shoot bottles and cans, and he has gone hunting with friends.
Early in his near-miss Senate run against Ted Cruz last year, a friend advised O’Rourke to “make sure that you’re seen in church every Sunday, make sure that they get a picture of you wearing boots and carrying a gun around,” O’Rourke said. “And I was just like, you know what, none of that is me. I don’t go to church every Sunday. I don’t carry a gun. I don’t have a gun.”
