As Colorado’s primary-election campaign hits the home stretch (ballots get mailed in early June) and the general election lies within sight, some of the sharpest jabs thrown by candidates and their supporters lately have involved guns and legislation aimed at curbing gun violence.

With news of the May 18 shooting that left 10 dead at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, still fresh, the topic is front and center for gubernatorial candidates.

The next day, at The Gazette’s and Colorado Politics’ Colorado Civic Barbecue on May 19 in Colorado Springs, Mike Johnston and Jared Polis got into the only pointed exchange between candidates in the Democrats’ gubernatorial debate when they argued over which one really displayed courage by sponsoring and helping pass gun-control bills.

(The upshot was they both got in digs at each other for reasons that might strike some as technicalities, but this won’t be the last we hear about these distinctions.)

At the same event, the four Republican candidates for governor all said they support the concept of “red flag” legislation – authorizing what are sometimes called “extreme risk protection orders” or “gun violence restraining orders.” It’s legislation that enables authorities to remove firearms temporarily from people deemed a danger to themselves or others.

But only one of the Republicans at our event, Victor Mitchell, said he supported the bill introduced late last month in Colorado, near the closing days of the legislative session.

The others, Walker Stapleton, Doug Robinson and Greg Lopez, all said they couldn’t get behind that particular legislation because it didn’t do enough to protect the rights of gun owners, though none have laid out specific amendments that would turn them into supporters. (After winning the votes of just two Republican House members, the bill died in a Senate committee amid a firestorm of criticism from conservative gun-rights advocates.)

Earlier in the day, Stapleton took part in a Fox News Channel interview about gun violence.

At the outset, the anchor pressed Stapleton over his decision to skip a nonpartisan debate about gun violence scheduled for later that evening in Denver by Never Again Colorado, an organization formed by young state residents to reduce gun violence.

Although Stapleton wasn’t the only Republican running for governor who had decided to pass on the debate, which was scheduled to include all four Democrats, as well as a couple of unaffiliated and third-party candidates – Mitchell and Robinson weren’t attending, either – but the Fox anchor wanted to know more.

Stapleton said he was “actually down in Colorado Springs and participating in a number of events down here and will not be in the Denver area tonight for that particular event,” but the anchor wasn’t satisfied.

“Conceivably, if you wanted to be there for the debate and thought it was more important than whatever is happening in Colorado Springs, we all make choices about why we go to things,” the anchor frowned.

Nonetheless, Stapleton noted that he has three school-age children and called the sentiments expressed by the Never Again movement “incredibly important,” adding that “it’s really important to do whatever we can to prevent these tragedies from ever happening again.”

While he said he wasn’t familiar with gun-control measures recently signed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott of Florida – banning “bump stocks,” establishing a three-day waiting period and raising the minimum age to purchase most long guns – Stapleton repeated his prescription to fix gun violence during the remainder of the brief Fox News interview.

Those include only allowing a single point of entry into schools, outfitting schools with metal detectors and stationing armed guards at every school. He also said it’s important to do something about mental health issues.

A few days later, on May 24, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, needled Stapleton from the steps of the Colorado Capitol.

Appearing alongside some of the youth who sponsored the Never Again Colorado debate, along with Democratic state House candidate Tom Sullivan – an ardent gun-control supporter who lost a son in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting – Inslee called out Stapleton, the GOP frontrunner in the race.

“I heard there’s one of the Republican candidates – I believe it’s Walker Stapleton – he’s running ads talking about his courage,” Inslee cracked. “He didn’t even have enough courage to meet with Never Again Colorado. He’s afraid of teenagers with braces on. How’s he going to stand up against the NRA and gun violence?”

As it turns out, one of the Democrats who had been scheduled to attend the May 19 Never Again Colorado debate didn’t show up, either. Johnston said at the last minute he had decided to head to Silverthorne to attend a meeting of the Central Rockies Friends of the NRA in hopes of opening a dialogue.

“I am going to talk to the NRA members who have fought our progress and convince them to be an active part of solving these problems,” Johnston said in a statement posted to social media and read at the Never Again event.

At the gathering in Summit County that evening, a campaign spokeswoman told Trail Mix, Johnston held four intense conversations with NRA members during a mixer that preceded the meeting – and persuaded three of them that a “red flag” bill makes sense.”It’s a start,” Johnston’s campaign aide said.