John Hickenlooper has made gun safety a priority throughout his career in public service. As mayor of Denver, he was a proud member of the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns. After eight years in that role, he took office as governor of Colorado in 2011. He faced one of the toughest challenges of his career in 2012 when a gunman killed 12 people in a movie theater in Aurora. In the face of tragedy, Governor Hickenlooper honored the victims not only with words, but with action, signing three new gun safety bills into law less than a year later. Those laws, which placed limits on ammunition magazines, required universal background checks, and charged gun owners for those background checks, were some of the first to be passed in the country after the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy propelled gun safety into the forefront of the national conversation in 2013.

In 2018, despite backlash from the Republican majority in the state legislature, Governor Hickenlooper was a fierce advocate of an extreme risk protection order bill that would have allowed judges to temporarily disarm people deemed to be a risk to themselves or others. The governor’s work has set a national standard, and his consistent commitment to the gun safety movement in various elected offices demonstrates his belief that lawmakers at all levels have a responsibility to keep their constituents safe. He will bring the lessons that he has learned over the course of his career to Washington when he becomes a senator.

We are proud to endorse John Hickenlooper for the US Senate in 2020.