WHEAT RIDGE — Activists and citizens turned a forum on veterans’ health care Thursday into an opportunity to give U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner their thoughts on immigration, the National Rifle Association and what they say is Gardner’s unwillingness to meet with his constituents.

At a hospital in Wheat Ridge, advocates from the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, along with at least one other immigration group, ignored event organizers’ requests to only ask about veterans issues, instead quizzing the Republican from Yuma about the American Dream and Promise Act. They handed him stacks of postcards from Coloradans who support the immigration reform legislation.

Gardner, a moderate on immigration, has supported Senate bills for years to protect beneficiaries of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, who are known as Dreamers. He has been noncommittal on the Dream and Promise Act, which passed the House in June, though he’s supported immigration reforms within in previously. Gardner said he hasn’t seen the House bill, which activists have sent to his office, but which hasn’t been introduced in the Senate.

“I’ll take a look at it, you bet, but I want something that can get done,” Gardner told a CIRC representative. “What I hope that we do is not just something to put our names on something, because then you can say you put your name on something, but I hope we can get something done. This is too important to just say, ‘Oh yeah, I’m on that bill.'”

During a related question later in the afternoon, Gardner said, “Immigration reform is incredibly important. I think one of the things that we ought to do is go back to those pieces of legislation that had 54 votes a year ago and try to again get a vote on it and get that passed. That included the Dream Act, that included border security. So, those are things that we need to do.”

Asked about suicide, guns and other topics by another attendee, Gardner spoke for several minutes about suicide prevention legislation he supports in Congress. Of two deadly mass shootings last weekend, he said, “We had a horrible weekend. Horrible.” Several people in the crowd then began shouting questions about guns.

“I don’t think people who are pro-Second Amendment are bad people. I don’t think they’re bad people. I don’t think they want crime. I don’t think people who support the Constitution want people to die,” Gardner said.

“So, we have to come together and find ways that balance our rights, that balance our protection of our communities. You did not partisanize it, please understand you did not do that,” he told the woman who asked about guns, “but there are people around the country, on both sides of the aisle, that have made this partisan. There is no Republican shooter, there is no Democrat shooter. These are extremists who did horrible things and we, as a country, have to stop this idea where we’re trying to game politics.”

Several of those who spoke at the hour-long event Thursday afternoon, held in the lobby of the Lutheran Medical Center west of Denver, said Gardner and his office had ignored their meeting requests. The senator repeatedly defended his office’s work, saying at one point, “We sit down regularly. … We’ve done thousands of meetings across the state.”

During what was billed as a meet-and-greet after the question-and-answer session, people crowded around Gardner and questioned him further about guns and immigration. He didn’t directly answer a question about whether he will continue to take donations from the National Rifle Association.

The senator, who faces re-election next year, will be visiting various parts of Colorado during Congress’s August recess, but has not shared his calendar with the public. Activists spread word of Thursday’s visit among themselves and filled most of the seats in the hospital lobby.