Tonight, during the State Of The Union, Colorado Congressman Jason Crow has announced he will be inviting the mother of a young man who was killed by gunshot in Aurora, Colorado last year.  The Congressman is using Mary Majok, a Sundanese refugee, and the tragedy of losing her son, to exploit what he refers to as “gun violence” and the steps he believes should be taken to end it.  He even goes so far as to compare Colorado to the horror ridden civil war in Sudan which Mary and thousands of others have fled.  Pretty sure the skyrocketing population in Colorado would disagree that people are fleeing the state due to gun violence.

The use of this individual victim has a glaring problem.  The perpetrator: Joseph Lugo.  

On March 21st, 2018, Joseph Lugo shot and killed Mary’s son, Potros Mabany, 21, and wounded another man.  Mabany was shot twice.

Lugo, a native of New York, has a lengthy arrest record in Colorado. He has multiple weapons arrests — including for being a felon in possession of a weapon and for having a defaced firearm — as well as rape, assault, menacing and kidnapping charges on his record.

In fact, Lugo is a prime example of what gun rights advocates repeat almost ad nauseam: criminals don’t follow laws, only the law abiding do.  Reg flag legislation, universal background checks, and banning “military-style assault rifles” wouldn’t have stopped Lugo – all gun control slated on Congressman Crow’s agenda.

Lugo was a public safety threat and we are glad he is off the streets.  People like him are why people like us carry.  People like him are why we want to have rifles available to defend our homes.  And if Congressman Crow really cared about the safety of his constituents, he’d be talking about how they can keep themselves safe, not pushing to disarm them.

We will never eradicate evil, but we can defend ourselves from it.