Demonstrators gathered on the Colorado State Capitol grounds in Denver on May 1, 1999, days after the Columbine High School shooting to protest the National Rifle Association's annual meeting in Denver. Eric Gay/AP hide caption
Demonstrators gathered on the Colorado State Capitol grounds in Denver on May 1, 1999, days after the Columbine High School shooting to protest the National Rifle Association's annual meeting in Denver.
Eric Gay/APOn May 1, 1999, Tom Mauser stood with a protest sign, alongside thousands of others[1], at the National Rifle Association's yearly convention in downtown Denver. It was a transformative day for Mauser. Just days earlier, his son Daniel was among the students killed at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.
The convention was scheduled to begin just after the shocking April 20 mass shooting in which two students killed 13 before killing themselves.
Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and others[2] had asked the NRA not to come, but the convention took place anyway. According to reports at the time, the group held a moment of silence for the victims. Actor and activist Charlton Heston, NRA president at the time, told the crowd[3] that there is "no more precious inheritance" than the Second Amendment.
Mauser remembers that day as the point when he realized he was in the fight for gun control.
Nineteen years later,
