Legislators who backed gun control recalled

DENVER – Voters ousted two Colorado Democratic lawmakers Tuesday in the state’s first ever legislative recall launched over their support for stricter gun laws after last year’s mass shootings.

Senate President John Morse and Sen. Angela Giron both lost their jobs in an election seen as a national measure of popular support for gun legislation.

Morse faced a tough election in the Republican stronghold of Colorado Springs, where he won re-election by just a few hundred votes in 2010. He lost by 343 votes, with 51 percent of voters backing the recall.

“We as the Democratic party will continue to fight,” Morse told supporters in Colorado Springs as he conceded the race.

Republican Bernie Herpin, a former Colorado Springs city councilman, will replace him.

Giron lost by a bigger margin in a largely blue-collar district that favors Democrats, with 56 percent of voters voting to recall her.

Angered by new limits on ammunition magazines and expanded background checks, gun-rights activists filed enough voter signatures for the recall elections, the first for state legislators since Colorado adopted the procedure in 1912.

The recalls were seen as the latest chapter in the national debate over gun rights and, for some, a warning to lawmakers in swing states who might contemplate gun restrictions in the future. But gun rights activists’ efforts to force recall elections for two other Colorado Democrats failed this year.