Corps. program, a career coaching initiative operated out of workforce center, community colleges, and nonprofits, with the help of a $25.8 million grant from Microsoft. Hickenlooper calls himself "a fiscal conservative." He has said, "I don't think the government needs to be bigger. I think the government's got to work, and people have got to believe in government, and I think that's part of the problem," and "I think what a lot of Americans want is better government, not bigger government." Energy and environment Hickenlooper's administration created the first methane-capture regulations for oil and gas companies in the entire country. The rules prevented 95% of volatile organic compounds and methane from leaking from hydraulic fracturing wells. The rules were later used as blueprints for California, Canada, and the federal government's own new rules. After Trump announced that the United States would leave the Paris Climate Accord, Hickenlooper joined more than a dozen other states in retaining the accord's greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. NPR has called Hickenlooper a "strong supporter of Colorado's oil and gas industry". Unlike most Democrats, he supports hydraulic fracking, a controversial oil and natural gas extraction process. Before politics, Hickenlooper was a geologist. He believes fracking is a beneficial practice with minimal environmental harm, even testifying in a 2013 hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that he had drunk a glass of fracking fluid produced by Halliburton. In February 2021, Hickenlooper was one of seven Democratic U.S. senators to join Republicans in blocking a ban of hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking. Gun policy Exactly eight months after the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, Hickenlooper signed bills into law requiring universal background checks on all gun transfers in Colorado except gifts between immediate family members, and banning magazines with more than 15 rounds. Although most Coloradans supported the measures, according to polling by the Denver Post, the bills' opponents gathered enough signatures to trigger special elections leading to the ousting of Democratic state senators John Morse and Angela Giron and the resignation of Evie Hudak. Hickenlooper was a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns until 2011. In 2018, he supported a Red Flag or Extreme Risk Protection Order Bill in the legislature that would have allowed judges to temporally restrict firearm access to those deemed a significant risk to themselves or others. The GOP-controlled State Senate never let the bill out