President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Biden*

(R) Donald Trump

80%

20%↓

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

90%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

90%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(D) Adam Frisch

(R) Jeff Hurd

(R) Ron Hanks

40%

30%

20%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(R) J. Sonnenberg

(R) Ted Harvey

20%↑

15%↑

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Dave Williams

(R) Jeff Crank

(R) Doug Bruce

20%

20%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

90%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) Brittany Pettersen

85%↑

 

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

(R) Janak Joshi

60%↑

40%↑

20%↑

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
June 15, 2018 01:23 PM UTC

If You Want a Semi-Automatic AR-15, Maybe You Should Start Going to GOP Fundraisers

  • 41 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(We’re good, thanks – Promoted by Colorado Pols)

If you want to start amassing guns, you might consider attending Republican Party fundraisers in Colorado.

To get your own military-style semi-automatic AR-15 rifle this weekend, you’d have to be lucky (or unlucky if you hate guns), because it’s the grand prize in a Saturday raffle for the Teller County Republican Party.

In May, you could have gotten one at a GOP fundraiser in Colorado Springs.

The AR-15 is the firearm used at the mass killings of students in Florida this year and Sandy Hook in 2012. it was used in the Las Vegas massacre in 2017 and San Bernadino in 2015. And, unfortunately, elsewhere.

Does that bother the organizers of the raffle?

“Absolutely not,” said Erik Stone, the elected chair of the Teller County Republican Party, told the Colorado Times Recorder. “Individual people are responsible for individual acts. Guns are inanimate objects. They are tools. They can be used the same as a car, a knife, a sword, as we saw in Kansas City. There are many weapons people can use with evil intent. And I have no problems with our raffle.”

Stone said the winner of the raffle will have to pass a background check before receiving his or her grand prize.

“If they cannot pass a background check, they will receive a cash prize in lieu of the firearm,” said Stone, adding that he is not only a gun-rights advocate but also an NRA certified instructor who recently taught a free concealed-carry class for teachers and first responders. “Everything will be done completely legally.”

At a GOP fundraiser in May, your chance to win an AR-15 would probably have been more pricey. Instead of being raffled off, the weapon was the first of six “live auction items” at the El Paso County Republican Party’s annual fundraiser at the Antlers Hotel in downtown Colorado Springs.

The estimated value of the AR-15 for this weekend’s raffle is $1,500. The second prize in the raffle is 10 one-once Liberty Silver Dollars, with a retail value of $200. Money goes to Republican efforts in Teller County, located outside of Colorado Springs.

Stone said the AR-15 has multiple uses. It is America’s number one gun choice for killing varmints, he said, which is the same point made in March by U.S. Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) when he said farmers and ranchers in his district use the AR-15 to shoot “pests, raccoons, or foxes or other smaller animals that are trying get into their chickens or disrupt their operations.”

Gun-safety advocates say you don’t need a semi-automatic weapon to kill raccoons or other farm pests. It’s essentially a military weapon, designed for rapid-fire killing not hunting or other civilian use, they say.

Comments

41 thoughts on “If You Want a Semi-Automatic AR-15, Maybe You Should Start Going to GOP Fundraisers

    1. You really care about how they misspelled San Bernardino? 

      Your fascist, authoritarian, pretender misspelled tap.

      Also, what's great?  More violence?  More wrecked lives?  You do seem to get off on that.

                  1. So the NSSF members are all gun or ammo manufacturers or dealers, according to the Atlantic article you linked to. If you are an NSSF member, you are a gun or ammo manufacturer or dealer. Or, possibly, lobbyist.

                    That would explain your interest here in practicing debate and argument with people opposed to various aspects of your industry.

                    So would you admit that you are in a basic conflict of interest in terms of your bread and butter vs. public safety?

                     

                    1. Guns are certainly not my bread and butter however I do qualify for membership. I have advocated for non-firearm alternatives to public safety down to a bucket of rocks and pepper spray, which even the hosts of this forum seem to think is bad idea and not a reliable solution for shootings due to the "unequal" confrontation to someone with a gun. This implies tacit acceptance that the reliable solution is equal force. I don't need to advocate that you all seem to know that already. 

                      What I have attempted to promote time and time again is that the efforts to prevent a firearm from getting in the hands of a bad guy through legislation/restriction has never worked. The efforts to promote said legislation fuels the gun industry. Every effort to reduce the number of guns in the marketplace results in an exponential increase in volume. Your efforts to remedy a problem are only making it bigger. If I really wanted to sell more guns saying nothing on this forum would be vastly more profitable, as you are truly the best marketing group a gun company could ever ask for without any input from me. 

                    1. I'm sure they have considered it however the lack of income is a primary deterrent. 

                    2. True — I see you have no problem admitting your industry is all about the money.  Lives be damned.  Socialize the costs, privatize the profits.

                    3. Your dystopia?  Not as long as we have the First Amendment and a democratic republic.  The pendulum swings, people realize they have choices, morally bankrupt industries like yours can be fought and restrained (just ask the tobacco and coming soon, the drug industry).

                      Some day, a majority will realize the costs of excessively easy access to guns are more than we care to accept, and will demand our representatives do more to stop it.

                      Trump makes the fictional Gordon Gekko look like a choirboy.  Trumpism is teaching us a lesson we've almost forgotten about why we have fought and defeated tyrannical rulers throughout our history as a nation.  Rampant corporate greed is no less an evil than political tyranny.

                      Corporations need to be good citizens too (and many exist today).  By celebrating the endemic corruption of his family and cronies, Trump only hastens the day of reckoning.  The last Gilded Age caused a major political and social reaction (trust busting, income taxes, establishment of the Fed with bank and securities regulation, greater social mobility and individual expression in the arts, women's vote, etc).

                      So I guess you can one day claim credit for helping start a revival of the American spirit which rejects the notion that your dystopian view of the world as being inevitable and everlasting.

                  2. Disingenuous, Negev. But sure, let’s pretend that you don’t make money in the firearms industry, however broadly that’s defined. 

                    I hope you said “Hi Bro” to D w B yesterday – he popped in for a quick cameo to throw shade on Laura Carno for being a media shill – pot, meet kettle.

                1. In fairness to Negev, I have always found him to be a fairly reasonable guy on balance.  Yes, he is against most, if not quite all, gun control measures.  But on other subjects he can be moderate and reasonable.

                  RMGO, by contrast, sees its role as acting as a freikorps for a fascist state.  The Dudster backs theocrats, cartels, anti-abortion fanatics.  He sees the gun issue purely as a loss leader to attract members to back an across the board fascist state.

                  I have never seen Negev trash LGBT rights, oppose health care , take food stamps from poor people or support taking immigrant children from their parents.

                  He can speak for himself, but he belongs in the ranks ofNRA as a "single issue" but not in the broad spectrum fascist advocacy of RMGO and its ilk.

                  1. Thank you V. I support pro choice/LGBT/health care/immigration I just don't see any of those rights written as clearly as "shall not be infringed", it is therefore perplexing that we debate its interpretation ad nauseam while accepting other rights unread. 

                    1. I had to come down here to get a reply box, Negev. But I wanted to ask you directly.

                      You contend that legislation/restriction has never worked. What happened in Australia? Was I misled?

                    2. Duke you may have been misled but I am really the only one on here making the case that in order to stop shootings there must be a full ban/confiscation and removal of all weapons to be effective. While one can argue the effectiveness of the Australian model it is clear that model may not be as viable in the U.S. due to a profoundly different relationship with guns here. 

                      My statement contending that legislation/restriction has never worked was based on the fact every high profile mass shooting in U.S. history has violated some form or multiple forms of legislation or restriction. Every time. 

                       

                    3. Negev — the problem is with your binary logic — if you can't prevent all  gun deaths well then, just let 'em keep dying is the reason we reject your thesis.

                      V'ger, Negev is a one trick pony.  Guns.  I don't recall him jumping to respond to any other issues, so that hardly excuses his continuous sales pitches for more guns to solve the problem of too many guns.

                      Although, I can see that with an annual attrition of over 30,000 customers each year, you do have an incentive to keep attracting more suckers all the time. Just like the tobacco companies going for the kiddie market with candy flavored cigs.

                      Maybe you should try making guns that look like water pistols. That’ll get the next generation hooked for sure.

                    4. Negev…..

                      I owe you an apology. I incorrectly presumed you were the typical "freedom" lover whose definition of freedom became and ended with the right to own anything that can be called a firearm. Turns out you are a traditional libertarian and not a hypocrite like many of the so-called Lovers of Liberty. 

                      As for your interpretation of the Second Amendment, it does say "shall not be infringed" but it also has that pesky language about the well-regulated militia. Parsing sentences, like parsing words, is something befitting Bill Clinton but not a principled conservative.

                      Finally (and this would have warmed the cockles of Anton Scalia's malignant heart), do we not need to focus on the original intent of the framers?  Perhaps if they had AR 15's in 1789, your interpretation would have some validity. But they did not; they had muskets.

                      Why don't we agree that there is a constitutional right to a late 18th century muskets and anything technologically beyond that can be regulated?

                    5. No apology necessary R&R however I do appreciate it and it is normal I believe to assume gun nuts are all right wing zealots which is not the case. I think the Dems have a huge opportunity in the current political environment to capitalize on this and I would eagerly support a Democrat who supports guns as much as abortion, as it is hands down the most consistent and reasonable approach to protected rights. 

                      In terms of your musket protections or that which were in use at the time our framers drafted these rights it would commensurate to freedom of speech protections on all documents written in quill pen, medical records of all available if presented online, and abortions banned by any other manner than coat hanger. If you limit the protected rights to the time frame of the era written for guns and apply them to the other rights, one must conclude that the founders intent was meant to last longer than their current technology. 

                    6. Accepting other rights unread?  Gimme a break.  As for the clarity of "shall not be infringed," the Supreme Court, through the voice of the now-dead Scalia, made it abundantly clear that reasonable restrictions on firearms did not violate the Second Amendment.  Moreover, the recognition of the Second Amendment actually granting an individual right came only recently.  The "well-regulated militia" phrase certainly calls into question any "clarity" of the Second Amendment as granting either an individual right or absolute rights.  

                1. You are not, Negev, the only person here that supports a total ban on military weapons in private hands without a very hard to get license. I do.

                  I note you offered no caveats to your initial claim that legislation/ restriction has never worked. That statement is untrue without your qualifiers, a neat but ultimately transparent ruse. I will sign off of this discussion if you don't mind. 

                  Nothing further of interest here.

                    1. That you would cite to me information compiled and released by IBD, is an insult to my/our intelligence.

                      Like I said…this discussion isn't at all interesting…

                      I think I will go out on the porch and watch the thunderstorms…boy, do we need this rain.

                    2. The best law that would work in this country is also the simplest to understand.  Raise the price of guns and ammo.

                      Trump is doing the best he can since gun sales are down after his election.  So putting 25% tariffs on steel should soon be reflected in the price of domestically produced guns, and steel-jacketed ammo.  Then imported gun manufacturers will take the profit opportunity presented, and raise their prices too.

                      Hail to the Buffoon-in-Chief wink

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Yadira Caraveo
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

63 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!