The video of a Democratic lawmaker talking about rape while debating a gun bill involving college campuses has gone viral, with Republicans and Second Amendment activists likening Rep. Joe Salazar to failed Senate candidate Todd Akin.

The freshman lawmaker from Thornton apologized Monday, agreeing his comment was inartful but saying he’s not the “boorish, macho, Neanderthal Latino” conservatives are making him out to be.

During debate of House Bill 1226, which outlaws concealed-carry permit holders from carrying in university buildings, Salazar said he was trying to make the point about the potential for misidentifying someone and possibly shooting the wrong person.

“It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, it’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at,” Salazar remarked in the debate late Friday.

“And you don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop … pop a round at somebody.”

Rep. Lori Saine, R-Dacono, took Salazar to task. “I guess, Rep. Salazar, if a woman doesn’t know she’s being raped, she doesn’t fear it,” Saine said.

Salazar issued a written apology Monday after he was ridiculed and ripped in blogs and on Twitter.

“We were having a public policy debate on whether or not guns makes people safer on campus. I don’t believe they do,” he said. “That was the point I was trying to make. “If anyone thinks I’m not sensitive to the dangers women face, they’re wrong. I am a husband and father of two beautiful girls, and I’ve spent the last decade defending women’s rights as a civil rights attorney.”

House Speaker Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, called Salazar a “great legislator and a person who has worked hard in support of women.

“Whatever his words may have been and however much those words are being taken out of context, he did the right thing to take responsibility,” Ferrandino said.

But Republicans said Salazar’s remarks were akin to Akin, a Missouri Senate candidate. When asked about his stance against abortion in cases of rape, Akin replied, “From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Lynn Bartels: 303-954-5327, lbartels@denverpost.com or twitter.com/lynn_bartels