Colorado Democrat Takes Shot at Guns: 'Law and Order' Is Much Better for 'Public Safety

Dickey Lee Hullinghorst (Credit: Official Web Site)

Another salvo has been delivered in the increasingly heated battle in Colorado over gun rights in the state.

Colorado House Majority Leader Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, a Democrat, says carrying a gun is unnecessary since state government should provide the safety citizens need.

“As a woman I have the right not to carry a gun and to feel safe on the streets, and that’s what we provide for in the state legislature is for all of us in the state of Colorado — to feel safe on the streets without having to carry a gun,” said Hullinghorst on “The Tim Caffrey Show.”

While she insisted she supports Second Amendment rights several times during the interview, Hullinghorst discounts gun ownership as the sole method of self-protection.

“There is nothing better than law and order for public safety," she says in the interview. "The thought that the only way we can protect ourselves is to wield our own weapon is completely absurd and an argument that I absolutely discount as frivolous."

In the wake of the Aurora, Colo., movie theater mass shooting last July that claimed the lives of 12 and injured 70, lawmakers and citizens have been battling over gun rights throughout the state.

Democrats have been facing powerful backlashes against the state legislature's sweeping gun-control legislation passed earlier this year. Early voting already has begun in the Sept. 10 recall elections of Democratic state senators Angela Giron and John Morse over their votes in March in favor of the bills, the Times reports.

A number of measures took effect July 1, including a ban on purchasing or selling or manufacturing magazines that hold more than 15 rounds of ammunition, as well as universal background checks.

State Sen. Greg Brophy, a 2014 Republican candidate for governor, said Hullinghorst's view “speaks volumes about the Democratic agenda on guns.”

“Unbelievably naive from a citizen. Absolutely dangerous from an elected official and leader of the Democratic Party in Colorado,” Brophy told Colorado Peak Politics.

Colorado Democratic state Sen. Evie Hudak told a rape victim in March that it was unrealistic to expect that she would have been able to fend off her attacker with a gun, saying, “Statistics are not on your side.”

“Chances are that if you had had a gun, then he would have been able to get that from you and possibly use it against you,” Hudak said.

Among the other headline-grabbing gun-control happenings in Colorado:

• 1,500 high-capacity magazines were given away in a rally just ahead of the ban;
• A Denver gun-rights rally was scheduled on the one-year anniversary of the Aurora shootings;
• State Sen. Jessie Ulibarri—who argued earlier this year that stabbing a crazed gunman with “ballpoint pens” while he’s reloading is better than carrying a guns—banned his kids from playing cops-and-robbers with Nerf guns after the George Zimmerman not-guilty verdict.