Having passed the red flag gun bill last year, the state legislature cannot become complacent on the issue of gun violence, argues state Rep. Tom Sullivan.

“It should be something that we discuss on a regular basis,” said Sullivan, a Democrat from Aurora who championed the red flag bill, and whose son was murdered in the 2012 movie theater massacre. “You should see one or two of these types of bills being brought forward, year after year after year, so that collectively, after five or six bills, we’ve tightened things up.”

Sullivan knows how some will interpret that statement: as a declaration of war on the Second Amendment. He insists that safe, responsible gun owners have nothing to fear. He and other Democrats said similar things last legislative session, but the red flag bill subjected them to a backlash that included a failed effort to recall Sullivan.

Nevertheless, gun-related legislation will be introduced next session, Sullivan assured The Denver Post in an interview last week.

“It’s coming. It is. That’s why I’m here,” he said.

“I’ve made it clear to my colleagues that I will be standing up for this, and that I’m welcoming their participation as well. Many of them are joining me in starting to put together bill titles, in wanting to be involved.”

Sullivan has expressed interest in a number of policies, including one to require stores to safely store firearms after business hours, and another to require safe storage in homes. What, exactly, potential 2020 gun legislation will look like is not totally clear yet, Sullivan said.

But he added that it will likely include a bill requiring gun owners to report the loss or theft of a firearm, something roughly a dozen states currently do. House Majority Leader Alec Garnett, a Denver Democrat who joined Sullivan in sponsoring the red flag bill, sees a lost-and-stolen bill as a possible winning cause.

“It’s a great example of a bill that helps reduce gun violence, is promoting responsible gun ownership and, I would assume, would pick up the vast majority of the public support,” Garnett said. “So that seems pretty common-sense to me.”

Garnett is optimistic that a proposal like that will not generate the concern that the red flag bill did. That law will go into effect just seven days before the 2020 legislative session convenes in January, and sheriffs throughout Colorado have promised to oppose it — so the law likely will continue to attract attention at the Capitol for a while to come.

Both Garnett and Sullivan said passing gun legislation involves hurdles bills on other subjects don’t face because the topic is so sensitive.

A 2018 survey done by both Democratic-leaning and Republican-leading pollsters found 76% public support for a red flag bill, but the bill still received zero GOP votes, and a few Democrats, including Senate President Leroy Garcia, voted against it.

It speaks to the fierce partisanship guns inspire that Colorado convened a special committee in the wake of May’s STEM School Highlands Ranch shooting, and the committee produced no recommended gun bills. That a group of lawmakers called together specifically because of a mass shooting advanced no legislative proposals about guns was frustrating to Sullivan and Democratic members of the committee.

But committee member Paul Lundeen, a Republican state senator of Monument, took a different view.

“The school safety committee did a really good job of not becoming captive to the political winds, or the ideological statements, and actually doing the work to make better policy,” Lundeen said. “Let’s do more of that, and less of the political statements the likes of which Beto O’Rourke and Tom Sullivan might like to make.”

“When Tom Sullivan says that now is not the time to take the foot off the accelerator, that sets a tone,” he said.