Photos: Colorado Newtown Shooting Remembrance Event

As the Denver Post's Austin Briggs reports:

Twenty-six times the sharp ringing of a bell cut through the crisp, cold air Saturday morning at the Cheesman Park Pavilion in honor of those killed one year ago in a shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The group, forgoing the usual moment of silence used to honor victims of violence, opted to ring bells, sing and pray.

"We're not going to be silent; we'll never be silent on this issue again," said Jennifer Hope, Colorado chapter leader for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, the group that organized the vigil.

Here's a little more of Jennifer Hope's speech yesterday:

A year ago, mothers across America got a shattering wake-up call. As we watched the tragedy unfold in Newtown, Connecticut, we imagined our own children in those classrooms, and our hearts broke. While we knew we could never truly imagine what these families were going through, we knew we had to do something. As we sat in our kitchens, at our jobs, in our cars, out with our children, each of us realized we could be silent no more.

Our hearts broke, but our eyes opened. We awoke to a national nightmare: A country where every day nearly eight children and teens are shot and killed. A country with the highest rate of gun violence of any developed country in the world. A country with a population so numb to the steady drumbeat of gun violence that many mass shootings aren’t even mentioned in the national news.

Over the past year, our devastation turned into conviction.

More photos from yesterday's event in Cheesman Park after the jump. 

 

 

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Reminder: Hickenlooper’s Shift on Guns Came Before Newtown

One year ago today, we took note early in the day of a front-page story in The Denver Post about Gov. John Hickenlooper and gun safety legislation. In the immediate aftermath of the summer 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, discussion turned to the possibility of passing gun safety legislation in response. Hickenlooper's answer at the time of the Aurora shootings, if you recall, was probably not:

“This person, if there were no assault weapons available, if there were no this or no that, this guy’s going to find something. Right? He’s going to know how to create a bomb,” [Hickenlooper] said.

On the morning of December 14th, 2012, Gov. Hickenlooper was reported to have changed his position. AP:

“I wanted to have at least a couple of months off after the shooting in Aurora to let people process and grieve and get a little space, but it is, I think, now is the time is right,” Hickenlooper said…

“When you look at what happened in Aurora, a great deal of that damage was from the large magazine on the AR-15 (rifle). I think we need to have that discussion and say, ‘Where is this appropriate?’”

A few hours after reading about Hickenlooper's shift in the morning news, every media outlet in America turned to an horrific shooting underway at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

It's not necessary in this post to recount the whole year-long story of what came after that day. Our readers know well how the Colorado legislative session began in January with high hopes among Democrats for gun safety legislation. The most important legislation sought by Democrats, instituting universal background checks for most transfers of guns, is now law. Colorado also limited magazine capacity to 15 rounds, passed a nominal fee to help cover the cost of background checks, did away with all-online concealed carry permit courses, and passed a bill to keep guns from people who commit domestic violence. Several other bills that were always intended to be "flanking" measures died along the way.

And then Colorado politics, as you know, went completely insane. We are still more or less in that state today.

But one year ago today, as these two stories became the same story, it was easy to understand why Hickenlooper's change of heart on gun safety was called for.

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Unfair Advantage: Magpul PMAGs Used At Newtown

UPDATE: Credit where due: we'd like to acknowledge that our friend, media critic Jason Salzman, was asking prescient questions about the origin of the magazines used at Newtown as far back as last March.

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Magpul PMAG high capacity magazines.

A long-speculated and significant detail from the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings last December emerges today–and as reported by FOX 31's Eli Stokols, there's an important Colorado connection:

Adam Lanza, who went on a shooting rampage last December at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn., carried out the killings using 30-round magazines made by Colorado’s Magpul Industries, according to a 48-page report released Monday.

Lanza used the company’s best-known “PMAG” (polymer magazine), a 30-round cartridge, to kill 26 people, including 20 first graders, the report said.

Colorado lawmakers this year passed five bills aimed at strengthening the state’s gun laws, including a measure that bans the PMAG and any magazine of 15 rounds or more.  Lawmakers cited the Sandy Hook shooting as a partial motivation for the laws.

Magpul, which is based in Erie, fought hard to stop the proposal, even threatening to leave the state should it pass (the measure became law in May and, as of November, Magpul has not yet moved although the company said it’s still planning it).

Here's the report in question from the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice. Search the document for the word "PMAG" to read about the high capacity magazines found in the possession of the Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza.

Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle used in Sandy Hook Elementary shootings, with Magpul PMAG magazine.

As one of the more popular brands of high capacity AR-15-type magazines available, it has long been a suspicion that the magazines used at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut last December were made in Colorado by Magpul Industries, Inc. As Stokols reports, Magpul led the fight to stop the passage of House Bill 1224, legislation limiting the capacity of magazines sold in Colorado to a maximum of fifteen rounds. Magpul had threatened to leave the state if HB-1224 passed, but as of this month has controversially failed to do so. It's worth noting that HB-1224 wouldn't have prevented Magpul from manufacturing its high capacity PMAGs in Colorado–just their retail sale here. In Connecticut after the Newtown shooting, legislation passed this year limited magazine capacity to ten rounds.

We'll put the question to our readers: will confirmation that the high capacity magazines used to gun down over two dozen people, mostly little kids, at Sandy Hook Elementary last year were made in Colorado by Magpul, alter the debate over gun safety legislation in Colorado? Do you think it should? Whichever side you come down on the issue, this is a development that requires a rational answer one way or the other.

And maybe before that, some soul searching.

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