About a hundred people sat in stone silence on the Capitol grounds steps leading to Lincoln Street just after noon on Tuesday.

They didn’t talk. Some waved at motorists, who honked their horns in support of their cause – to pressure Gov. Jared Polis into signing off on an executive order banning all firearms in Colorado and instituting a gun buyback program under an emergency declaration. 

The proposed executive order is unconstitutional, something Polis explained in a long missive yesterday. 

The 10 minutes of silence was ended with the reading of names of those whose lives have been lost to guns.

The numbers of protesters dropped precipitously between Monday and Tuesday, from over 1,000 to around 200. Those who came Tuesday were joined early in the day by the founders of Here 4 The Kids, Saira Rao and Tina Strawn, according to organizer Wolf Terry.

Among those sitting on the Capitol lawn Tuesday were long-time Denver residents and friends, Carrie Davis and Dana Miller.

“I’m here again today because my desire to ban guns is the same today as it was yesterday,” Davis said. 

But Miller is in it for more than this week.

“I think that social change of this magnitude … could take all of our lifetimes (to pass),” Miller said.

To expect drastic moves in one 24-hour period is unrealistic, Miller told Colorado Politics, adding, “So I think it’s a realization now that we’re in this for the long haul.”

That realization is, in some ways, an affirmation that playing the long game, often through incremental change, is more realistic than expecting that days-long sit would immediately translate to a radical and, as the governor noted, unconstitutional policy change. 

Some allies on the gun issue also argued that what the protesters seek is a shortcut to all of the work that other activists have pursued and built on. They panned the sit-in’s goal as “extremist.” 

“There are certainly folks who want us to pursue more extreme solutions such as an executive order to ban all guns and instituting mandatory buyback programs – but those ideas are unconstitutional and they diminish decades of work by policymakers and activists who have labored tirelessly to stop gun deaths and could undermine and demoralize those efforts going forward,” said a letter from state Sens. Tom Sullivan, D-Centennial and Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, who are among the most visible leaders of the legislature’s Gun Violence Prevention Caucus.

On Monday, the governor said he does not have unlimited authority under a disaster declaration, and certainly not one that would suspend either the U.S. Constitution or the Colorado Constitution. In addition, the governor said, he does not have the authority to create a new state law, which is what would be necessary to implement a buyback program, nor does he have the ability to access state funds that are not appropriated by the General Assembly.

Some of the sit-in participants have accused Polis of ignoring their pleas because he wants to be president. 

Both Davis and Miller said they appreciate the work of the more mainstream gun control groups, such as Colorado Ceasefire or Moms Demand Action, saying the latter have gotten the movement to where it is now, including recent victories for gun control advocates in the signing of five major gun bills.

But kids are still dying, Miller said.

She added that a part of what’s fueling the sit-in is a sort of desperation, of not knowing what else to do or what the next step might look like.

Davis, who has lived abroad in countries where she said this is not an issue, said she is asked by friends: “How can you live like that?” Her response is that they shouldn’t have to fear going to the grocery store or movie theater or school. That’s not normal, she said. 

While they likely won’t get the number they sought earlier in the week, what they will get, Davis said, is a change in the conversation. 

That includes conversations between their group and people of color, Miller added. The White women who are showing up at the state Capitol are concerned about Black and Brown and Indigenous children, she said. For them, and for those children, all gun violence is unacceptable, she said.

Terry, however, remains adamant about their demands that Polis sign the executive order, saying baby steps and incremental change are not working. They’re also adamant that the legislature pass a ban on assault weapons, too.

While they appreciate the work of other organizations, that work isn’t doing the job anymore, Terry claimed. 

“If you want guns to go away, if you want gun violence to end, if you want our children to stop being murdered, then take a hard look in the mirror and recognize that you have the power to demand what we are demanding,” Terry said.

“Right now we are imagining bigger.”

The smaller crowd drew this reaction from Rocky Mountain Gun Owners: “Where the hell are the 25,000 they promised?”