A Longtime Colorado Gun Reform Activist Explains What Happened When Saira Rao’s Here 4 The Kids Parachuted Into Her Issue

“Saira Rao never contacted any of the groups on the ground, which is a strange thing.”

In June I wrote an article about a new gun control group. My piece was headlined “Here 4 the Kids Smells Like A Very 2023 Racial Ablution Grift,” and in it I pointed out that one of the organization’s cofounders was already rather well-known:

The top two people listed on its Leadership page are Saira Rao, famous for convincing liberal white women to pay handsomely to host dinners in which they are confronted over their ostensible racism (see this New York magazine article or this Helen Lewis interview), and Tina Strawn, “an anti-racism facilitator, racial and social justice advocate, author, and pleasure activist” whose website touts her “3-day immersive, anti-racism experiences.” 

At the time, H4TK, as I’ll call it going forward, had just arrived on the scene with a splash. After its establishment, it swiftly demanded that Jared Polis, Governor of Colorado, sign an executive order banning all guns and instituting a mandatory buyback in his state. Rao and Strawn encouraged white women to show up en masse at the Denver Capitol to pressure Polis — white women, they explained, would be “least likely to be brutalized by the police.”

In my article I pointed out that this made no sense. Any such order would be obviously unconstitutional, and could dangerously inflame far-right groups by validating their worst-case fears. I argued that the apparent lack of any background or prior interest in gun control on the part of anyone associated with H4TK suggested the whole thing was, well, a racial ablution grift. The goal, I suggested, might have been less to accomplish anything gun control–wise — obviously Polis would never in a million years sign anything like what H4TK was demanding — and more to use Rao’s name, fame, and network to swell the ranks of white women to whom she and Strawn could sell their various products (there’s a merch store) and trainings.

Despite the presence of myriad red flags suggesting grift rather than earnest activism (let alone effective activism), H4TK’s Denver campaign had received some credulously warm coverage in major news outlets, including CNN, ABC, and NBC. The whole blatantly-unconstitutional-fantasyland-demand thing was a footnote in the coverage when it was mentioned at all. Further fueling the excitement were celebrity endorsements from the likes of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Chelsea Handler.

But then, alas, after the event took place NBC noted that “Organizers had hoped for 25,000 protesters on site Monday, but by 8 a.m., there were closer to 1,500.” Polis didn’t unilaterally ban guns in Colorado.

After my post, I received an email from Devin Hughes, a reader and the founder of GVPedia (GVP stands for “gun violence prevention”), a website that “arms policymakers, advocates, and the public with facts and data to create evidence-based policy to reduce gun violence.” 

He wrote:

Great article on that grifting GVP organization. Was the first time I had heard of them, and I’m pretty plugged in to the movement. Checked with some colleagues and it was the same reaction. A high ranking advocate in Colorado who has been in the space for decades learned about them in April. They have zero institutional support, and they basically just parachuted into the issue without talking to any other established organizations. Everybody I talked with agreed that their approach was uniquely terrible and a bad look for the rest of the GVP community. Hopefully they just move on to their next grift.

Well, whether or not you consider what they’re doing a “grift,” they have, in fact, moved on to their next. . . thing: a gathering this coming March in Washington, DC designed to apply the same pressure they did on Polis (or would have, if more people had showed up), but this time targeting President Joe Biden himself.

Specifically, from their website: 

On March 9, 2024, tens of thousands of us will be in Washington, D.C., to directly petition President Joe Biden.

1. We demand the President sign an executive order to ban guns and buy them back.

2. We demand the President sign an executive order to ban fossil fuels.

We are applying for permits for the D.C. rally, and it will be ADA-compliant; however, to keep it accessible, there will be other ways folx can participate — including a general strike and regional rallies — the details of which are still being built out.

As you may have noticed, Here 4 the Kids has grown significantly more ambitious. It is now seeking not only to end gun ownership (via executive order) but also to ban fossil fuels (via executive order). There was no mention of oil on its website until fairly recently. I will admit that it’s fun, in a morbid way, to imagine what would happen if America suddenly “banned fossil fuels,” but of course that’s not going to happen.

Back when Hughes reached out to me, he offered to connect me with the “high ranking advocate” he mentioned. I promptly forgot about this, distracted by other things. But now that Here 4 the Kids is on to its next effort — an effort that will, I’m sure, be helped along by another handful of credulous articles written by hapless journalists, and a fresh wave of celebrity endorsements — I figured it was time to speak with this Colorado gun control advocate about what happened in Denver back in June.

She turned out to be a very interesting and impressive person: Eileen McCarron is the president and cofounder of Colorado Ceasefire, “the longest-running grassroots gun violence prevention organization throughout the State of Colorado.” Prior to that, she had “been a computer programmer for the Internal Revenue Service, a geophysicist for Amoco and a math instructor at Gateway High School and Aurora Community College.”

We spoke a couple weeks ago. To have focused entirely on Saira Rao would have been a wasted opportunity, so we talked a lot about McCarron’s work as well. The following transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity, and I’ve added a bunch of links pointing to further background information. Make sure to click on the last footnote, which points to Here 4 the Kids’ responses to some of McCarron’s claims. 

Eileen McCarron: I’ve been involved in this since 1995, when I was in Texas. I was concerned because George W. Bush got elected governor of Texas, and it was the year of Newt Gingrich taking over Congress. . . 

Jesse Singal: . . . The Republican Revolution, right?

Correct. I kept reading articles about concealed carry, so I finally called Brady — at that time, it was Handgun Control, Inc. — and said, “Is anybody working on this down here in Texas?” and they linked me with people and I started working on it, and I haven’t stopped. I’ve always been a volunteer. 

We moved to Colorado in 1999, four months after Columbine, and so there were people working on the issue at a frenetic pace, because there had been some school shootings, but nothing at that scale before that. So I started working with those folks, and have been working on it ever since. To go back, we had a Republican legislature and Republican governor in 2000, 1999, and the governor got with the Democratic attorney general, and they proposed a number of gun reform bills in the wake of Columbine. And pretty much all the significant ones died, especially closing the gun show loophole. That was the major one. 

And so Safe Colorado — which was the group that sprang up after Columbine — ran a ballot initiative to close the gun show loophole, and it won by 70%, which is just an incredible margin in a state that was viewed as pretty pro-gun. We got active in Colorado Ceasefire because we were upset at the failure of the legislature to pass that law and some others, so we formed a PAC to remove legislators from office who had stood in the way. And we did, and focused on the Senate. There were six races that changed hands, some in the House too. 

And I would never say that we exclusively did it — there were many, many, many people in groups working on that election — but we had a part in it. And we had gone and raised money and put out independent expenditure flyers and walked door to door. And so then we went, “Wow, we helped elect six people to office.”

Real traditional meat-and-potato political advocacy.

Yeah. It’s sort of the backdoor that most people come in as (c)(3)s, or charitable, tax-deductible ones, and then they move to a PAC. We started as a PAC, then the next year added an advocacy organization. Only in 2015 or ’16 did we add a 501(c)(3). You know what I mean by that? 

Yeah, I used to work for one. So federal 501(c)(3)s can’t advocate directly for candidates and there are certain other restrictions, but donations are tax-deductible on the other hand, right?

Yeah, they can’t do any electioneering, and they’re limited in their advocacy. They can do advocacy, but they’re limited in their lobbying. So I’ve been working on the gun violence prevention issue ever since. There was a dry spell for about 12 years until after the Aurora Theater shooting. There was not the climate at the Statehouse to make the changes we needed. Either the Republicans controlled things, or controlled one House, or we had enough Democrats who were pro–gun rights.

And in a very purple, rural state, you’re gonna have a lot of Democrats who aren’t like New York City Democrats [in terms of their views on gun control], right?

Correct. Actually, it’s kind of funny; some of those Democrats who were pro–gun rights were right up in the Adams County suburb of Denver. But nevertheless, we had a number of very strong pro–gun rights Democrats, and we had a goodly number of fence-sitters. The rural swing-state Dems, they were scared of taking a stand. And this was following when people believed that Al Gore lost because of Bill Clinton’s gun laws in 1994.

Was that the assault weapons ban that eventually sunsetted?

Yes, the assault weapons ban and the background checks, but the assault weapons ban was probably the biggest one. But in the 23 years we’ve been working, we’ve actually helped pass 23 gun reform laws in the state of Colorado. And actually, on the books, there is only one bad bill from the time we’ve been working that still remains, and we will not get rid of that one. I failed to say that in 2000, the Democrats took the Senate for the first time in 40 years. It was just a huge change. If you look back on the makeup of the governors and the legislature going all the way back to the ’60s, it is a dramatic change in the year 2000. 

But in 2003, the Republicans had the trifecta again [the House, Senate, and governorship], and they enacted two laws that were really bad. One was the concealed carry law, and the other was a preemption to prohibit counties and cities from passing stronger laws than state or federal laws on guns. We repealed the preemption in 2021. The concealed carry is here to stay. You do have to have a permit in Colorado, unlike the 25 or 26 other states that are now permitless, but because of the Supreme Court decision, the Bruen decision in 2022, there’s no way we’re getting rid of that concealed carry law until we get a change in the Supreme Court.

So your view overall is that you’re working in a complicated and sometimes difficult state for this sort of advocacy, but you feel like you guys have made fairly steady progress over the years?

Oh, yeah. Starting with 2013 is when we really started to make progress. There were some smaller successful bills in 2002, and some smaller ones in 2008 or 2009, but in 2013, following the Aurora Theater and Sandy Hook, we enacted five new laws, including universal background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines. I just want to point out that we have gun shops all over the state selling those magazines, and that’s because the sheriffs won’t enforce it. They won’t enforce it. In fact, the Club Q shooter had several 60-round magazines, but in the charging documents on him, no mention of the illegal magazines.

They just won’t enforce it. Really? If anything, the tendency [among prosecutors] is toward overcharging.

They did not charge him with that. They charged him with felony counts of murder and I think hate crime stuff. But usually, when there are these awful crimes, they throw the book at them, everything that they did wrong. Because we have term limits, the previous sheriff — the one that was there during Club Q — was term-limited. That sheriff came under a great deal of criticism for his failure to use the ERPO or Red Flag Law on the shooter in Club Q, because he was an obvious candidate for that. It turned out in the two years that law had been on the books, the sheriff had never filed a single one, not one. And it’s law enforcement that tends to file successful ERPOs.

It’s important to understand the history of your advocacy, but onto the scene arrives Saira Rao, and Here 4 the Kids. When did you first find out about them?

It was April 28 that I heard about it, because that’s when we were having an event at the Capitol, celebrating that the governor had just signed four gun bills. And a colleague took me aside and said, “Have you heard about this?” And I was like, “They’re crazy.” And the statement was that they were going to come and camp out on the Capitol grounds on June 5 or something like that, and they were going to stay there until the governor signed an executive order that banned all guns, and did a buyback of all guns. And this was to “protect the children.” And they were going to have 20,000, 25,000 people that were going to gather for this, something like that; just a phenomenal number.

[Reading:] “Organizers had hoped for 25,000 protesters on site Monday, but by 8 a.m., there were closer to 1,500.” That was the end result.

That’s what they said. I heard from other people it was about 800.

So from your point of view, you’re there to celebrate and reward a governor, in Jared Polis, who had done the right thing, and this was another example of your groups making progress. And then you see this other group come in threatening to camp out over an impossible demand.

It’s impossible under the Second Amendment of the Constitution to do that. Even a person who does not agree with the current interpretation made by the Supreme Court since Heller would say the idea of banning all firearms is unconstitutional. And it’s a violation of the Colorado Constitution,

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too, which is in some way stronger [on guns] than the U.S. Second Amendment.

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I’m not going to pretend everyone who disagrees with me on gun rights is some crazy nut. But there are some nuts out there, and when you think about their response to something like a clearly unconstitutional executive order from a governor, that would not cool things down or make things easier for a group like yours, right?

No, but the governor wouldn’t do it anyway.

In an alternate universe, where it happened—   

Because it would enrage the gun rights people, yes. Some people even suggested “Oh, maybe this is a ruse by the gun rights people.”

Oh, you thought it was some sort of false-flag thing where her organization wasn’t even—? 

There were some people who suggested that, but we knew enough about Saira Rao from her running for Congress back in 2018. She was not a stranger to Colorado, so no, we knew she really was coming from the — I would say — radical left.

And how did you and your friends and contacts in the movement respond when you found out about this?

We had some discussions about how to respond, between different groups. There were some who wanted to go aggressively and speak strongly against it. There were others who felt best to lie low and let it fail. Because we believed it would fail. Ceasefire was a little bit more reticent about publicly criticizing them, and the reason people didn’t want to criticize them is you never want a movement to be going after another group in the movement.

Do you consider them another group in the movement? 

No, actually not. But potential people who are excited by the whole issue could be turned off from the issue by criticizing somebody who’s going to a great deal of effort to put on this event. And maybe I can send you the wording we finally sent out. We had a governor who had not been strong on this issue earlier in his political career. As a congressman, he had unfortunately voted against our druthers on a number of bills. And when he ran for governor, we did not endorse him in the primary because of his track record. But he has now signed 14 gun reform bills.

Doesn’t sound bad to me.

Some of the bills Governor Polis signed were initially stronger, but governors will often have a say on what appears on their desk. Working through the legislative gauntlet, changes were made to a number of the signed bills, and it is likely that the governor’s druthers were included in some of those changes. Governor Polis’s name has been mentioned as a presidential candidate by national columnists. Vetoing a gun violence prevention bill would not bode well for him in a Democratic primary. 

We have made an incredible amount of progress on gun laws in Colorado under Governor Polis, so we are very grateful for his support.

So from your point of view, Here 4 the Kids is not rewarding that progress the way they should.

Yes! That’s the first problem. We’re making amazing progress in Colorado and we’d like to see Here 4 the Kids encouraging that progress to continue, and encouraging Governor Polis to continue, on this path. The second problem is the unconstitutionality of their demands, both by federal Second Amendment and Colorado’s constitution. And the third is that the governor’s executive powers do not extend to what they were asking him to do. He does not have that power. And actually, we do not want him to have that power. 

Right.

If any president or governor has that great power, then we’re in an authoritarian government. 

There are all sorts of laws they could override in that situation.

Correct. That’s a dictatorship, and that’s not what we believe in. And so we said, “We believe in democracy, and we believe that we have to keep punching at it and keep working at it to make progress. And yes, at times, it seems slow. And we do have a crisis in the country, but we have to keep working on it.” And we believed that her [Rao’s] program would not be successful, and we were worried about it, because she was bringing in all these national celebrities.

That’s also frustrating, because if the national celebrities wanted to help out in Colorado on guns issues, they could work with the actual groups on the ground.

Right. And the other thing too is that Saira Rao never contacted any of the groups on the ground, which is a strange thing. If you’re wanting to work on an issue, it seems you would want to start working with the people there and go, “Hey, I’ve got these new ideas.”

And as far as you know, other than whatever she said about it when she was running for office, this was the first time she expressed an interest in this issue, right? Or am I missing something?

I don’t remember that when she ran for office that she expressed an interest in this issue.

It’s not as though she’s arriving with years of experience in this advocacy, where she could afford not to contact folks already there.

So the first time I ever heard of her was when I was a Democratic precinct organizer. In 2018, I went to the Denver assembly, which is where we vote on candidates to get on the ballot. We get started in the whole primary process, and the precinct organizers have a voice on who gets on the ballot. And so we’re standing in this long line, and a guy I knew in the Democratic realm came up to me, and he said, “Would you like a sticker for Saira Rao?” And I said, “Who's she?” And he said, “She’s running for CD 1,” and I replied, “That’s Diana DeGette’s seat.” And he said, “Yeah,” and I said, “So what’s the problem with Diana DeGette?” And he said, “She supported Hillary Clinton.” I replied, “So did I!”

The wrong audience for that particular appeal.

So I said, “Tell me something else,” and there wasn’t anything else. So I never heard the reason she was challenging Diana DeGette was because of slowness on gun violence issues. Diana DeGette has always been supportive of gun violence reform, gun law reform. I’m not sure Saira Rao’s schtick was for running for Congress, and she got defeated [by DeGette] pretty strongly. 

So you guys do end up putting out a statement about Here 4 the Kids’ efforts that is pretty diplomatic, but which makes it clear you’re against it, right? 

Yes, just before the event, we sent out a statement to all our followers and it pretty much says the things that I told you.

Would you mind sending that to me?

Yeah, I can send that to you. I can probably send the CFCU one too; it was more strongly worded than ours.

Yeah, that would be interesting to be able to contrast them. [Click here for the Colorado Ceasefire statement, and here for the CFCU one.]

I heard Saira Rao is planning something in DC?

Well, they seem to have expanded. When I wrote about it, their goal was just guns. Here 4 the Kids had just launched as a gun control organization or gun ending organization. Now, they appear to have expanded to ending all fossil fuels. So they’re going to demand that Joe Biden sign a presidential executive order unilaterally instituting a mandatory gun buyback and unilaterally ending all fossil fuels in the United States.

Well, that’s really dividing your focus.

It seems that way. They seem to have expanded their ambitions a little bit. I just want to go to their website and see what it says.

I’m surprised it’s not aimed at ending racism, as that is an issue she has worked on intensively.

It says on the front page, “Ban guns and fossil fuels.” I bet if I went to the April version of the page, it would just say “Ban guns.” [This turned out to be true, as I noted at the top of this article, and as H4TK acknowledged in its responses to me, which you can find in this article’s final footnote.]

I think the failure of their effort to make any headway at all in Colorado does not bode well for their national effort.

So you’re saying Joe Biden is not going to sign an executive order banning fossil fuels? That’s your prediction.

He can’t do that anyway! For the same reasons that Governor Polis can’t do that. And for the reasons I said, we can’t have the president have dictatorial powers.

But I mean, couldn’t someone argue that for someone who — without psychoanalyzing her — has a history of trying to raise money with emotional appeals, some of this seems like a stunt, especially because they are raising money for their organization off of it? Or would you not go that far?

I don’t know. There were some who contended that when they went to their website for the Colorado thing that it looked like it was a fundraiser, but I don’t know. I can’t imagine many people bought stuff there. But they already had merchandise out on their website for the Colorado effort.

How do you feel about them raising money off Colorado gun control efforts?

I feel like people who bought into it feel that it was a failed effort, and for that, there’s no reason to be involved in the movement. My fear is that it discourages people who are concerned about gun violence from participating either in a local or national group to be part of the movement. And if they went out and bought stuff for that, they might be feeling saddened and maybe even mad at groups such as ours because we didn’t go out and support it. But there was no way we would be out supporting an effort that would be asking our governor to do things that he could not do and try to shame him, and that’s actually what it was trying to do: to pressure the governor to take actions that are not within his power.

I see this as someone who who knows very little about activism myself and hasn’t really done it, but there’s maybe a lesson here about this version of activism that’s very flashy and glossy — And we’re gonna get 20,000 people on the lawn, we’re gonna sit in — versus the quieter and more complicated work of actually changing things, which is maybe not so glamorous.

It’s not glamorous, and it’s a lot of work, and you have to take small steps. And then you can have larger steps. We made huge gains in 2013, 2019, 2021. This year we’ve made huge gains. But a lot of it is being there and continuing to advocate for the issue, and for people to go out with audacious, impossible goals, which can get people excited. . . . There were 800 to 1,500 people who showed up who were excited, and it would be great if they put their energy into Ceasefire, Moms Demand Action, CFCU, Blue Rising, Brady, Giffords, any of the local or national groups If they put their energies into that, they will see progress, although it’s not as exciting and sexy as being out there on the lawn, demanding things that they can’t get. 

One of my big fears was that it would fizzle so badly that it would reflect on all of us, but I don’t think the press went with that. I had this fear that the press would go “There is no support for gun violence prevention in this state, because look, nobody showed up.” But that didn’t seem to happen. The press reported that only a small number showed up, but I didn’t hear the refrain of “see, there’s no support,” and I think it’s because they know there’s support for it in the state. And we’ve gotten a lot of laws enacted in the state and there’s still a lot of concern. There still are mass shootings happening. Aurora Theater, Boulder, Club Q, everyday shootings on the street, terrible things. And I’m just going to editorialize here: I actually think a lot of our problems in the country are because of concealed carry. We have normalized the carrying of guns among everyday people, and so when people are upset with a friend, having an argument with a lover, whatever, the gun is there and gets pulled out. And we have an increasing problem of road rage. And now we have an increasing problem of guns getting in the hands of kids.

Yeah, there are obviously some awful stories on that front.

Half the stolen guns in Denver are stolen out of vehicles, because people are carrying guns around. People leave them in their car when they go in someplace that can’t have them or if they choose not to carry. It’s just the little things; I’ve just read so many stories that have just been an altercation that blew up because of the presence of a gun; and now people are dead, or seriously injured, and the shooter’s going to jail for life, or for a long, long time.

It sounds like you guys were successful enough in separating yourself from Saira Rao and that the coverage did not do any splash damage to your cause. But it also sounds like part of you wants to focus on the positive, which is that they got 800 people out there, and those folks could be helpful for the cause. Like there are some positives here.

Some people said we should go down and try to recruit folks there, but we decided not to, because we didn’t want to be viewed as just stealing from somebody else’s efforts. We didn’t want to be cannibalizing another group.

[Laughing] It’s interesting, because people could very much accuse her of doing exactly that to your efforts.

I went to give a talk back in May for some small group, about 15 people, to talk about extreme risk protection orders, which we give talks about all the time, and that’s the first time I saw their flyers sitting there, too. Somebody had them there. And that was actually before the 28th, so it was in April, and I hadn’t heard about it. So I saw the flyers and I thought, “Oh, no, another group” — because there are a number of groups in Colorado — and I thought, “Oh, we’ve got another one, and we’ll have to have them join the coalition.” And people have already sent me notes saying “You all need to merge, there are too many of you.” Part of it is a lot of the groups like the Moms Demand Action, which are huge, national groups, whereas we’re a local group, so we decide what we want to work on, and we’re self-run. We don’t have people telling us nationally what to do, but then we have very little money. We don’t have a billionaire backing us.

This is all really interesting, and I like the idea of what I write being not just about Saira Rao, but also about your efforts and how you accomplish what you’ve accomplished. I think her thing in DC is scheduled for March 9, 2024, like seven months from now. If you were advising them, now that they’re shifting to fossil fuels and guns, what would you advise them about how to not repeat the same mistakes? Should they just reach out to the groups that work on these issues? Or what else could they do?

One: Reach out to the groups that work on the issue, and align with them. Two: I think they should focus on one issue. The idea of addressing guns and fossil fuels in one event is just, you know, what the heck are you about? What is it that you want? They’re too disparate; they aren’t that related. I don’t see the relationship, and I just feel like that divides their whole message. Maybe it’s their focus on the children. But if you want to work on climate change, get with the climate change people and really push that and talk about the children. Three: don’t express a number of people who will show up that you cannot achieve.

That seems like an unforced error on their part.

If they had said we’re going to have 800 people on the lawn doing this, they could have walked away feeling successful. But instead they were saying they would have 25,000 people. I would say they were lucky; the press didn’t belittle them, which they could have done. And fourth: don’t start with impossible demands.

What do you think of the media’s role here? Because one thing I noted in my initial article was there was just very credulous media coverage that downplayed the impossibility of their proposal. It didn’t really signal to people that this was not a group with any history on this issue, and that they had sort of parachuted in. Would you say media outlets should have been a little more critical, a little more skeptical?

It was disappointing that the media did that. Where I would say that they’re very good as an organization, they had an incredible communication strategy. In terms of getting their message out, they really had an excellent team. So I think the media maybe believed they were going to have a lot of people there. It’s unfortunate the media never called us —  maybe they called other people — and then we didn’t make an extensive effort to go and combat them in the media, because within the movement, you just don’t want to be criticizing other groups. Even if they’re new groups that have impossible objectives.

It seems like famous people know one another and Saira Rao is in with some famous people, so they wanted to help out their friend. 

Yeah, and I think it’s because people are concerned about the issue. Who can’t be upset about gun violence after Uvalde, and after Sandy Hook, when you have first graders and fourth graders being slaughtered? If you’re not upset, you just have become inured to the whole issue, or to the whole issue of gun violence, or you’re too protective of your guns that you can’t even see what loose gun laws in the country bring about.

But I would probably posit that you expected a lot of people in Colorado, but it didn’t happen. What did you learn from that? Because having this event at the Capitol did not help our cause here. I think it did not hurt. In some ways, it might have been a little helpful in that I think the governor’s office might have viewed us as [laughing] really reasonable people.

Like, Look at the alternative!

Yeah, look at this. 

[Laughing] So maybe you guys were secretly behind it.

I do think that might have been something that came out of it, of gaining some measure of acceptance in the governor’s office. And I don’t mean just Ceasefire — I mean all the groups working there at the Capitol. Although the governor’s office might not have wanted some of the things we were trying to do, I think that they might view that there are others out there that aren’t as reasonable. 

And on the Friday before this Saira Rao thing — June 2 — the governor had an event at the governor’s mansion to sign the ghost guns bill, but also it was a celebration of what we’ve done this year. And forgive me, but I think that the choice to have that celebration was partly because of what was going to happen on Monday. To say “Hey, look, here’s what we have done. We have made tremendous strides this year.” 

But we were not contacted by Here 4 the Kids, and from information from other people in other groups, they were not contacted and asked to participate, and we all struggled with exactly how to react and each came up with a little bit of a different solution, but generally, we all viewed the goals as impossible. And undesirable — as it’s dictatorship if you could give that much power to an executive. In fact, I just had breakfast last week with some friends who are Republicans from Ohio. They don’t like Trump, but they’re not happy with Joe Biden either. And they said they don’t like his use of executive power at all. And they said, but George Bush did it and others have done it; they’ve all been doing it. But there’s concern about taking more and more and more leeway on the executive power, and a part of it is because we have a dysfunctional Congress. 

It’s hard to get anything through the legislative branch.

In Washington, that’s right. So the presidents take what they believe they can do within the confines of their executive powers, and if they stretch too far, the Supreme Court slaps them back. And what Saira Rao would have — would be taking us to a dictatorship, in my view, if you could take that much power, anybody on any issue. And also my suggestion to Saira Rao and her folks is that they should focus on one issue. You shouldn’t spread yourselves to several issues.

They’re formidable issues — it seems unlikely that they’ll be able to solve both of them.

And they should be working with other groups that are already working on those issues and begin discussions with them.

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Questions? Comments? Unreasonable demands we can make of President Biden, like a universal basic income for podcasters? I’m at singalminded@gmail.com. Image via Getty: “DENVER, CO - APRIL 28 : Tom Mauser, father of Columbine High School shooting victim Daniel Mouser, left, Sandy and Lonnie Phillips, parents of Aurora theater shooting victim Jessica Ghawi, and gun control supporters gather after Gov. Jared Polis signed four gun control bills at Colorado State Capitol Building in Denver, Colorado on Friday, April 28, 2023. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)”

1. The relevant section of the state constitution reads: “The right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question; but nothing herein contained shall be construed to justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons.”

2. I should note that between when I interviewed McCarron and when this article ran, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico attempted a much more limited version of what H4TK was pushing for, “issu[ing] a 30-day suspension of open and concealed carry laws. . . in Bernalillo County, where Albuquerque, the state’s most populous city, is seated,” as ABC News reported. As that article notes, a judge swiftly blocked her order on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, and on Friday she scaled it back considerably.

3. After speaking with McCarron, I sent Here 4 the Kids some questions and heard back from a spokeswoman at a PR agency the group is working with. Below are my questions and the responses provided by cofounder Tina Strawn, all untouched other than that I am bolding her answers:

Singal: [Eileen] McCarron argues that Here 4The Kids complicated the ongoing efforts of groups like hers by pressuring Gov. Jared Polis into signing an executive order that would have clearly been unconstitutional (since it would conflict with both the U.S. and Colorado constitutions), and that if a governor did sign such an order, he would effectively have dictatorial power -- an obvious problem, from a gun-control perspective, because at some point there will be another Republican governor who could simply sign his or her own order perhaps overturning all gun control laws. She also said that gun control groups in Colorado had increasingly warm relations with Polis and viewed him as a reasonable partner, and that your group's demand complicated this relationship.

Tina Strawn: We want to see the 2nd Amendment, which is rooted in white supremacy and anti-Blackness, repealed. From there, a 28th Amendment banning guns would be added to the Constitution. The Constitution has been amended 27 times. Our request of a 28th Amendment is possible and necessary in order to protect all Americans – especially our children. We agree with New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham that governors do have the power to suspend gun rights protected by the 2nd Amendment in order to declare an emergency. Guns are the #1 killer of children and teens, which is an emergency. Bold actions such as those demonstrated by Gov. Lujan Grisham are vital. We are not attempting to regulate inhumanity. We are here to BAN inhumanity.

Singal: She also argues that Here4TheKids made no effort to contact existing, on-the-ground groups prior to launching its campaign, which made the situation more complicated and fraught than it would have been otherwise.

Strawn: We are in solidarity with those who are in solidarity with us. Our strategy is abolition. We acknowledge that other organizations have been working on gun legislation for many years, yet we also understand, acknowledge and emphasize that gun violence is increasing, which is why we believe that abolition is absolutely essential.

Singal: When I asked her what advice she would give Here4TheKids concerning its DC campaign, she said she would recommend contacting the groups already working on gun control and fossil fuels, and perhaps choosing one of the two issues rather than both, because either is a challenge in its own right.

Strawn: We are actively forging alliances and invite all organizations and individuals committed to the abolition of guns and fossil fuels to join us. If you align with our mission for transformative change, we encourage you to collaborate with us as we bring our collective demands directly to President Biden. Our aim is to secure executive orders for a nationwide gun buyback program and a ban on fossil fuels. Our forthcoming rally in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, March 9 will serve as a crucial platform to amplify these imperative issues.

Singal: Can H4TK provide any info about its expansion into the issue of ending fossil fuels? I'm correct in saying that at the time of the Denver event, the group did not do any work on this issue, right? 

[The spokeswoman herself confirmed that I was correct about this being H4TK’s first foray into this issue, and having addressed that, appears to have passed only my first question on to Strawn.]

Strawn: Similar to guns, fossil fuels are a major threat to our country’s well-being while politicians continue to grow further apart both [sic] issues. Our children are watching the world burn and flood, sea levels rise, crops and wildlife endangered by droughts. Climate change threatens our planet’s diversity of life. Current regulations are ineffective and inhumane. It’s time to take action on all threats to our lives; therefore, we must ban all guns and fossil fuels.