Remember that unsuccessful attempt in the legislature to toughen penalties for vandalizing oil and gas equipment? Child’s play.

It turns out the author of a letter to the editor in Boulder’s Daily Camera that got a national media mention last week — for appearing to endorse outright violence against fracking operations — is the author of a pending statewide ballot issue to hike Colorado’s severance tax on oil and gas production.

Reached by phone today, Andrew O’Connor, of Lafayette, unapologetically reiterated his hardline stance on fracking to ColoradoPolitics.com.

“I wouldn’t have a problem with a sniper shooting one of the workers” at a drilling site, O’Connor said, noting that he is not threatening violence himself or calling on anyone to engage in it.

“I see fracking as murder, and there’s medical and scientific evidence of that,” he said.

O’Connor’s letter was published in the Camera April 19 but was changed by editors after its publication to soften his original wording, as reported by the Washington, D.C.-based, right-leaning online news site Daily Caller (founded by Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson). The Daily Caller report — which challenges the Camera for having published the missive with verbiage that could be construed to incite violence — compares the letter’s two versions:

“If the oil and gas industry puts fracking wells in our neighborhoods, threatening our lives and our children’s lives, then don’t we have a moral responsibility to blow up wells and eliminate fracking and workers?” Andrew J. O’Connor wrote in the Boulder Daily Camera on April 19.

The letter was edited the following day to read “don’t we have a moral responsibility to take action to dissuade frackers from operating here?”

The tweaked version appears with an editor’s note:

…This letter was edited to delete references that may have been construed to expressly advocate violence or property destruction. The Camera does not condone or endorse violence or property destruction of any kind. However, the letter presents a philosophical question the Camera believes is worthy of community conversation in the context of the ongoing discussion over fracking.

O’Connor seemed unchastened by the flap or the newspaper’s decision to re-edit his views.

“My message is the same. My message is that fracking is immoral,he said. “They put profits before people.” And he repeated, “I believe fracking is murder.”

The use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to increase the yield of oil and gas reservoirs has stirred endless debate over whether the technique taints groundwater and whether the fluid it pumps into the ground is harmful or benign. The oil and gas industry has produced reams of research over the years concluding the process is harmless while critics of the technique point to research findings to the contrary.

Even Gov. John Hickenlooper, a former petroleum geologist, couldn’t seem to settle it when he famously slurped fracking fluid to demonstrate how safe it is.

O’Connor also touted his severance tax ballot issue, whose title was approved by the state earlier this month. Its backers can begin petitioning for enough voters’ signatures to land the measure on the fall ballot.

The proposal doubles the state’s statutory 2 percent-to-5 percent tax rate on oil and gas production to up to 10 percent.

“It’s just amazing to me that oil and gas is so threatened by this ballot initiative,” he said. “The state of Colorado is subsidizing the richest industry on earth.”