Levi Tillemann (Levi Tillemann via YouTube)

A Colorado congressional candidate has found an eye-catching way of advocating for stricter gun control in his latest campaign ad.

In the ad, released last Friday, Democrat Levi Tillemann shows himself being pepper-sprayed. After a few moments of the yellow spray stinging his face, Tillemann plunges his head into buckets of soap and water and uses a hose to wash his eyes.

“Empower schools and teachers with non-lethal self-defense tools, like this can of pepper spray,” Tillemann urges in the video. “Pepper spray doesn’t cost much and it can be safely stored in a break glass in case of emergency cabinet. But it’s powerful and won’t accidentally kill a kid.”


“It’s incredibly painful, now I can’t see anything,” he says as his eyes swell up. “Wow, that’s intense.”


President Trump has suggested training teachers to use a firearm in the wake of a string of school shootings that have claimed dozens of lives already in 2018. Critics argue that putting more guns in schools will do less to stop school shooters and more to unintentionally provide potential shooters with guns.

“I’ve had enough of Democrats and Republicans talking past each other on gun control as kids, schools, and communities pay the price in blood,” Tillemann says in the ad.

The Colorado candidate, a former Obama administration Department of Energy official, supports a ban on assault-style weapons and other gun-control measures such as a ten-day waiting period for potential gun-buyers.

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