May 21, 2025 09:36 AM UTC

RMGO Emasculates Colorado's Biggest Gun Rights Representative

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, which bills itself as the state’s largest “no compromise” gun rights organization, has for many years built a reputation for spending much more of its time attacking Republican lawmakers who are at least nominally on their side than going after Democratic lawmakers who have actually been responsible for introducing and passing a series of landmark gun safety bills that have established the state as a regional leader on the issue. Although dreadfully counterproductive to their goals in practice, RMGO simply exercises power where they still have some, since their last few attempts to punish Democrats with recall elections ended in humiliating failure.

But since there are still elements within the Republican base who love RMGO’s pugilistic pursuit of their hopelessly unrealistic objective of eradicating all gun regulations, RMGO is still effective at persecuting fellow Republicans who at any point show less than total devotion to the cause of making AR-15s available in hardware stores next to the hammers. Over the years, the organization has attacked Republican candidates without regard for any broader political strategy other than to promote their own even farther right candidates, playing a role in the Colorado Republican Party’s lurch rightward into ultimate collapse under the incompetent leadership of former chairman Dave Williams.

Following this year’s legislative session in which several big gun safety bills passed over the shrill but ineffective objections of RMGO, the organization true to form is taking its frustrations out on not just a fellow Republican, but one of the highest-profile “Second Amendment guys” in the Republican House minority, Rep. Ryan Armagost:

In a lengthy thread on Twitter/X last week, RMGO laid out their rather confusing case against Rep. Armagost, accusing him of colluding with the dreaded Michael Bloomberg and his affiliated gun control organizations to let this year’s gun control bills pass. If you know anything about Rep. Armagost, you know the allegation that he would plot with gun control proponents to pass any bill is extremely unlikely. It appears that Armagost may have disagreed with RMGO’s plans to send “canvassers” to the homes of lawmakers, which could well have turned into harassment or worse. But in his own Twitter broadside in late March, Armagost made clear what he thinks of the group’s influence at the state capitol, and this we suspect is the real problem:

Dudley and RMGO are upset that they’ve become irrelevant and invalid as a firearms “organization”. I want us to keep fighting the bad bills in a way that can stop them, but I believe that is not the intent of Dudley or RMGO. They have shown by their actions (in my belief) that they are trying to divorce the firearms industry. I believe that they intentionally want bad bills to pass, so they can use it to raise money and primary Republicans more than challenge Democrats…

They have never won a lawsuit, nor an election, nor the respect of any elected official…

If you are a self-respecting gun owner, you need to stop giving them your hard-earned money and your loyalty. We need to choose a strong organization to take the lead on Colorado gun advocacy…

We’ve said as much for over a decade, even as some Democrats wish we would keep quiet and let them wreak havoc. All told, RMGO has probably done more to contribute to the long-term Democratic dominance of the state of Colorado than any organization that wasn’t founded to elect Democrats. RMGO has done this both by undermining fellow Republican elected officials over often trifling ideological differences, and driving the Republican Party to the right by backing fringe primary candidates who meet their litmus tests on guns.

For all of these reasons, Colorado Democrats have long considered RMGO a net asset. As long as they’re attacking their own strongest advocates, that’s unlikely to change.