of the town hall site, just across the district line, is Columbine High School, the site of the 1999 school shooting that killed 12.

In a district that voted for Democrats Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, Coffman has been a perennial political target for Democrats. He is in his fifth term, but Democrats haven't made gun control a centerpiece of their campaigns for votes. The electorate is evenly split between Democrats, Republicans and those unaffiliated.

That could change this year. The raw emotions at Coffman's town hall shows how guns have become a volatile issue in an already hyper-charged midterm election, stoking passions that will be difficult for Democrats to contain, and difficult for embattled Republicans like Coffman to defend against.

Patti Seno, 53, broke into tearsas she recounted how her husband, a firefighter, was on the scene of the Columbine shooting and an attack at a nearby school in 2013 that killed one student. Her son had planned to see a midnight showing of the new Batman movie the night that the gunman attacked the audience in Aurora. Yet, she told Coffman, she hadn't spoken out until watching students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, campaign for new gun laws.

"I am ashamed, as it took children to shake me from my comfort zone to come forward to say enough is enough," said Seno, a Democrat. "An avalanche is coming to Washington, sir, and it is going to be led by our children."

Coffman has received $34,000 in contributions from the National Rifle