Tom Sullivan – Gun Control Advocate New Representative for HD 37

Update January 2nd, 2019

The first day of the 2019 legislative session is on January 4th 2019 and many lawmakers will be taking their seats in the chambers for the first time. Several of them are part of the blue wave that saw Democrats take control of the House and the Senate.

One of the new Democrats heading to the state house in January will be Tom Sullivan. He previously had an unsuccessful state senate bid, but this year he beat Cole Wist, the Republican incumbent, in House District 37 – a typically Republican District in Arapahoe County.

Tom Sullivan is the father of Alex Sullivan, who was one of those murdered in the Aurora Theater shooting and Sullivan has made gun control a major part of his platform. He says he plans to reintroduce the extreme risk protection order when he takes his seat at the state house in January.  Otherwise known as a Red Flag law, an extreme risk protection order would allow family members and law enforcement officers to go before a judge and request guns be temporarily taken away from individuals who pose risks.  Such a measure was defeated in the Republican controlled state Senate in May 2018.

“Those are just common sense things, those are things that the vast majority that the community agrees with and so those are the types of things we can do – banning bump stocks, things that turn assault weapons into machine guns. Those don’t belong in our communities. That’s a common sense thing that people agree on yet we couldn’t get something like that passed last year but now with both houses and a governor, those are the type of things that can get taken care of.”

Sullivan, a veteran and former federal postal worker says he also wants to introduce and support apprenticeship programs, veterans programs and victim advocacy programs.

As of early Wednesday morning, Sullivan had 53 percent of the votes with 95 percent of results reported.

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