Posted on 08/21/2016 3:42:30 AM PDT by real saxophonist
Each time there’s another shooting, bombing or killing that gets widespread attention, Kelly Cogswell knows she’s going to have a busy day.
As the concealed carry coordinator for Weld County, Cogswell reviews each permit application that comes though Weld County. When she first took the job in 2009, the county had issued roughly 2,500 concealed carry permits. Now the county has issued 17,800. So far this year, the county’s already issued 2,371 permits, almost as many as the county issued in those first 19 years.
That’s a lot of people packing guns.
Guns aren’t going away, even if some people wish they would. More and more people are buying guns and obtaining the legal right to carry the weapons with them almost anywhere they go.
“We have a completely new culture,” said Weld County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Cpl. Matt Turner.“It’s not bad; people want to protect themselves. I don’t blame them at all. I am one of those people. But we also have to make sure it’s done the right way.”
“We have a completely new culture. It’s not bad; people want to protect themselves. I don’t blame them at all. I am one of those people. But we also have to make sure it’s done the right way. — Cpl. Matt Turner, Weld County Sheriff’s Office spokesman
Even when he’s off duty, Turner admits he still carries a handgun. His wife and her best friend have guns, too, and the concealed carry permits to go with them.
“When I got out of the Army in 2009 I thought that people who wore tactical clothing every day were strange; I wore a uniform every day and just wanted to get out of it and wear shorts or blue jeans,” he said. “Now tactical clothing is a fashion statement ... it is popular to be ‘prepared.’ ”
Owning a gun
A gun doesn’t ensure an outcome, it provides choices. That’s how Anthony Navarro sees it.
With his friendly demeanor, crisp hair and khaki shorts, he looks like a community youth group leader — a youth leader who happens to be packing three guns, 91 bullets, a pair of knives, two tourniquets and a flashlight. He owns a gun store, Colorado Shooting Sports, 2435 8th Ave. in Greeley, a place that sells firearms, other weapons and classes on how to use them.
His original intent wasn’t to own a gun store. He wanted to teach classes on gun safety. But he sells guns now. His students told him they wanted a better, friendlier, more customer-oriented retail store. Navarro thought he’d try to create one.
Even with a successful firearms business, the educational side remains paramount; he’s got a money-back policy on all his classes.
Navarro’s been teaching his classes for about 11 years. If his students don’t like the class, they can ask for their money back. In all that time, no one has ever asked, he said.
Through that education, Navarro hopes he might be able to change a culture from the inside out, to help others see the importance of reserve and responsibility. That take on the gun business has brought him a fair measure of success. So much so that he’s looking at franchising his Colorado Shooting Sports business.
Guns, and the choices they provide, are important to him. And as he sees it, American gun owners are their own worst enemies at times. When they run their mouths off, when they posture and use guns as symbols of masculinity, it contributes more to the arguing than as a solution. Pro-gun and pro-gun control sides are both yelling so loud that no one is hearing each other, he said.
He admits it’s only a matter of when, not if, a gun he sells at his store gets used in a crime. But the choices a gun can offer, especially in the hands of a trained operator, make the business worth it to him.
“There are thousands of women that I’ve trained,” he said. “I sleep at night knowing that I gave them choices … when you take guns away, you take away their choices.”
The desire to teach gun safety stays with him. Teaching is a part of who he is. Even as he explained his thoughts and views on gun control, he grabbed a dry-erase marker and started drawing out diagrams to help illustrate his point.
In his mind, teaching people about when to use guns — and even more importantly in his mind, when not to use them — might help cut through all the yelling and find a common ground of understanding. At least that’s what Navarro hopes.
A CHOICE AND A RESPONSIBILITY
On a weekend day, 53-year-old Erie resident Nick Ehrhart and his wife, Coreda, took a tactical pistol class offered by Navarro.
“We have a responsibility to protect ourselves and others,” Ehrhart said.
Ehrhart lives in Erie and commutes to work in Denver. During that same drive he’s had people point a gun at him on the interstate. He didn’t feel comfortable in his day-to-day life anymore. He decided he wanted to carry a gun. He also wanted a good education on how to use it. After asking around, he heard about Navarro’s classes at Colorado Shooting Sports.
Ehrhart grew up around guns, where he’d see hunting rifles in truck windows and pistols carried on the hips of folks around Steamboat Springs. Even growing up around them, he didn’t get a gun until his kids grew older and left home. A few years later his wife decided she wanted to follow in his steps.
“My husband got the concealed-carry license a couple years ago, and I didn’t really have any interest,” she said. “Then just based on what I saw on the news and the political status that we have now and all the talk about changing gun laws, I decided that it was probably a good idea to do it. I kind of feel like I have a duty to carry, for some of those people who don’t think that they should, or can’t.”
Having a gun won’t make every situation safer, Nick said, but it makes him feel safer. If someone pulls a gun on him during his commute, he’s not going to take out his gun too.
“No one is comfortable with a gun pointed at them,” he said noting that his concealed carry doesn’t change that.
If he sees someone attacking someone else with a makeshift club or a knife, then maybe the gun will be enough to stop them, he said.
“I’d rather be the person who at least did something,” Coreda said. “That’s the biggest reason. I feel like it’s almost a duty or a responsibility.”
The fear of guns
It’s easy for people to say if they were nearby when something bad happened that they could have stopped them with their gun, said Tom Mauser. But when police show up and everyone there is shooting, how can they tell the difference between the good and bad guys?
Mauser became an outspoken advocate for gun control in Colorado after his son, Daniel, died in the Columbine High School shooting.
About two weeks before his son was killed, Mauser remembers Daniel asking him if he knew there were loopholes in the Brady Bill, a U.S. law that requires background checks for guns.
“It was a very short conversation,” Mauser said. “I didn’t really get engaged in the conversation. But then (Daniel) was killed by a gun that was purchased through a loophole in the Brady Bill.”
Even with that Mauser’s not completely against guns. He just wants to look at the big picture, at education and maybe slowing down the rush to arm every citizen in the name of protection.
“I think most people in America agree with and support a basic right to bear arms, but they, by a strong majority, believe in regulations and restrictions,” Mauser said.
“This new movement that we’ve been seeing of promoting more concealed carrying and even opening carry, I’m opposed to that movement. When you open carry, you scare the hell out of people.”
He talks about finding ways to ensure the people who shouldn’t have guns are prevented from getting or buying them. People should get an education before they make a decision to buy into the gun culture.
“When we hear about cases of domestic violence and suicide and workplace shootings, in many cases those guns were bought by people who bought them for protection,” he said. “They were doing what my opponents would say they should be doing: arming themselves. But it goes wrong.”
It’s a bad guy with a gun
Greeley Police Chief Jerry Garner doesn’t see the country’s growing gun culture as bad. He reserved that word for criminals who, among other things, are willing to use guns against officers and peaceful residents.
Although more guns also means there’s easier access to guns, even for those who shouldn’t legally have them, in Garner’s mind, if criminals want a gun, they’ve basically always been able to get them and probably always will.
That’s also the philosophy of State Sen. John Cooke, the county’s former sheriff.
“You know, if you look since 1990, violent crime and gun crime have dropped 50 percent, and yet gun ownership has increased exponentially,” Cooke said. “I think last year they sold millions of guns. The crime rate has dropped, but gun ownership has increased significantly.”
What law enforcement needs then is prosecutors who seek maximum penalties for crimes committed with guns and judges willing to throw the book at those criminals, Garner said. But even if that stops criminals from using guns, there are a lot of ways those with ill intent can hurt others.
“I would love to be able to go about doing my duties without a gun,” Garner said. “But realistically in America that’s not going to happen in my lifetime because of the culture of bad guys with guns. Not the gun culture, but the culture of bad guys with guns. Guns are not evil. The people who misuse them are.
“Some folks tell you the solution is to pick up all the guns, that’s not realistic, that’s not going to happen. With the billions of guns that are out there in America, the guns aren’t going away, so what we have to figure out is how to deal with the people who misuse guns.”
The author probably couldn't have come up with a better contrast than the despicable Tom Mauser.
BTW, my permit is number 1870-something.
A Calling to Arm: More and more people creating a culture of guns, self-defense and the military mentality
My street has a lot of business owners and they all have guns. You throw in the likely wiseguys, there’s a bunch more guns.
In 20 years, there’s never been ONE gunshot in the neighborhood.
That’s all I need to know about how safe guns are.
“Now the county has issued 17,800.”
According to the lib-left meme...everyone in Weld county should be dead now.
Heck, there should actually be white caps on the waves of blood that should now be flowing in the streets...
Wasn’t it an amazing coincidence that Mauser’s son brought up the loopholes in the Brady bill just before he was killed at Columbine? I find it strange that he doesn’t mention what loopholes he was talking about.
“almost as many as the county issued in those first 19 years”
19 years? Of her tenure in her job? In the existence of the county? I’d think her tenure is much less than 19 and the county’s existence has been far longer. Typo? 9? 190?
“Mauser said. “I didn’t really get engaged in the conversation. But then (Daniel) was killed by a gun that was purchased through a loophole in the Brady Bill.” “
No, your son was not killed by a gun. He was killed by evil that had taken over the killer’s mind. What are you doing to combat evil?
Guns... YAY! BANG ON YOU, LEFTIES...
“Mauser became an outspoken advocate for gun control”
Schism in the old German family?
This is the biggest piece of profligate crap I think I've heard in quite a while.
A loophole in the Brady Bill? The entire bill is an abridgement to the Second Amendment; it is a LOOPHOLE against the Second Amendment.
And Mr. Mauser, your son died at the hands of two sociopaths who were badly raised, by parents who were gun control advocates. I know he will never read it, but it needs to be said to keep the record clear.
Take Vermont. Best gun laws in the country (ie, practically none), second lowest murder rate among the 50 states in 2014.
Not “a culture of guns” as much as a culture of freedom. People are often brainwashed into viewing the Second Amendment as just the gun rights amendment when in reality it is the freedom amendment. The amendment that defends all the others. The amendment should be clarified as it is often misrepresented by the left. A well regulated [ well armed / self regulated / well working ] milita [ citizen defense force ] being necessary to the security of a FREE state, the right of the people [ citizens ] to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Which means that it is prohibited under the Constitution to infringe upon this unalienable right.
Yeah, how’d sanders get elected?
I believe until the elections he was a rather decent supporter of gun rights.
Scott Adams (Dilbert) summarizes it as:
Pretty much the same as carrying a weapon legally. What is the purpose? “To shoot people,” obviously. Really? All those millions of legally owned weapons - and a few thousand shootings annually - most all of them with illegally possessed weapons.
In both cases the actual purpose is to intimidate people from trying something they have no business doing.
Even when he’s off duty, Turner admits he still carries a handgun.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It’s a job requirement where my son is a policeman.
Take Vermont. Best gun laws in the country (ie, practically none), second lowest murder rate among the 50 states in 2014.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Another subject, to be sure, Vermont does have very few gun laws but is so “progressive” They allow felons to vote from their jail cells. (Maine too)
I sincerely hope that more and more people are realizing that this happens at birth and does not, in the slightest degree, require paying an agent of the state for a piece of paper.
“Best gun laws in the country (ie, practically none), second lowest murder rate among the 50 states in 2014.”
I don’t think Vermont taken as a whole is as ‘vibrant’ as say Detroit or Chicago.
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