Colorado congressman booed as people demand action on guns

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. (AP) — Grumbling and jeers met the request for a moment of silence for the 17 people killed last week in the Florida school shooting.

"Let's do something for them!" one man yelled at the beginning of Republican Rep. Mike Coffman's town hall Tuesday night. Another participant cried out, "We're done with thoughts and prayers!"

Coffman's swing district in the Denver suburbs is all too familiar with mass shootings. A few miles to the northeast of the high school that hosted Tuesday's town hall is the location of the Aurora theater massacre, where 12 people were shot to death in 2012. A few miles to the southwest of the town hall site, just across the district line, is Columbine High School, the site of the 1999 school shooting that killed 13.

In a district that voted for Democrats Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, Coffman has been a perennial political target for Democrats. He is in his fifth term, but Democrats have not made gun control a centerpiece of their campaigns for votes though the electorate is evenly split between Democrats, Republicans and those unaffiliated.

That could change this year. The raw emotions at Coffman's town hall shows how guns have become a volatile issue in an already hyper-charged midterm election, stoking passions that will be difficult for Democrats to contain, and difficult for embattled Republicans like Coffman to defend against.

Source: Yahoo News