dozen people sat filling out forms. “Before we begin, I’ll tell you right off that I’m an NRA recruiter,” said a dark-haired young man named Rob, in an Equip 2 Conceal golf shirt. “My job is to get as many people into the NRA as possible, because we really need it now. They’re doing a lot of things to protect our rights.” He motioned to a pretty young woman in a company shirt, who put a membership form in front of me.
Rob used the first hour to run through the “This is the trigger, this is the muzzle” drill. What he really wanted to talk about, though, was something he called “home invasion”—people coming into your home not to steal things but for the sheer maniacal pleasure of torturing you to death. “They”—white guys in ski masks and chinos, presumably—“have been watching what time you come home, what time do you get up to goto the bathroom. They know where your bedroom is, and they’re there to kill you. Make sure you have your gun loaded. I live alone, and I always have my gun near me. I carry 24/7. I’m ready.”
The Aspen Room had Wi-Fi. By going to several websites and juxtaposing numbers, it took me about ninety seconds, while Rob was talking, to discover that Rob wasn’t entirely paranoid. Robberies in peoples’ homes had increased by almost half from 2004 to 2008—one of the few crime stats that was growing worse. Seventy-two thousand American households had been struck, or about one in sixteen hundred. On the other hand, only eighty-seven Americans had been murdered in such incidents in 2008. I was literally more likely to be struck by lightning.
The young woman was passing out another set of forms. “In addition to your Colorado permit, you can get a nonresident carry permit in the state of Florida,” Rob said. “That’s right: Florida will issue you a carry permit even though you don’t live there. Why do you want one? For one thing, three states—Washington, Virginia, and West Virginia—honor a Florida permit but not your Colorado permit. So that’s three extra states where you can exercise your constitutional rights. Second, let’s say you lose your Colorado permit. You couldn’t carry here, because Colorado doesn’t recognize a nonresident Florida permit, but you’d still be able to carry in thirty states.”
The only reason I would “lose” a Colorado permit would be if, say, I committed a violent felony or beat up Margaret and had a restraining order placed on me. Florida was willing, even then, to step in and allow me to continue to carry a gun.
For the live-fire portion of the class, we got into our own cars and followed Rob across metro Denver—thirty minutes of our three hours—to a grimy shooting range in a shopping center. Five of the six lanes were taken up by young black guys teaching their girlfriends to shoot, with lots of whooping and laughing amid deafening blasts of nine-millimeters and .45s. My classmates and I filed to the sixth lane and, one by one, snapped off twenty shots from a long-barreled .22 target pistol. As preparation for defending ourselves with a gun, it was about as useful as learning to cook an omelet. We emerged, heads ringing from the concussions of the nine-millimeters and .45s, and Rob was there to hand us a certificate, xeroxed onto faux parchment.
“You can’t possibly believe this class has prepared me to carry a gun,” I said.
“This class has met the
legal requirement
to carry a gun,” he said. “There’s a difference. I strongly recommend more training.”
The shooting portions of the classes had reminded me why I rarely took my guns to the range. I hated the noise. So, in for a penny, in for a pound: As long as I was going to carry a gun, I decided to look into getting a silencer for it.
The first silencer I ever saw was the one Oddjob used to dispatch Solo—before having him crushed inside a Lincoln Continental—in
Goldfinger
. I was eight years old. The elegance of that long tube protruding
Rob used the first hour to run through the “This is the trigger, this is the muzzle” drill. What he really wanted to talk about, though, was something he called “home invasion”—people coming into your home not to steal things but for the sheer maniacal pleasure of torturing you to death. “They”—white guys in ski masks and chinos, presumably—“have been watching what time you come home, what time do you get up to goto the bathroom. They know where your bedroom is, and they’re there to kill you. Make sure you have your gun loaded. I live alone, and I always have my gun near me. I carry 24/7. I’m ready.”
The Aspen Room had Wi-Fi. By going to several websites and juxtaposing numbers, it took me about ninety seconds, while Rob was talking, to discover that Rob wasn’t entirely paranoid. Robberies in peoples’ homes had increased by almost half from 2004 to 2008—one of the few crime stats that was growing worse. Seventy-two thousand American households had been struck, or about one in sixteen hundred. On the other hand, only eighty-seven Americans had been murdered in such incidents in 2008. I was literally more likely to be struck by lightning.
The young woman was passing out another set of forms. “In addition to your Colorado permit, you can get a nonresident carry permit in the state of Florida,” Rob said. “That’s right: Florida will issue you a carry permit even though you don’t live there. Why do you want one? For one thing, three states—Washington, Virginia, and West Virginia—honor a Florida permit but not your Colorado permit. So that’s three extra states where you can exercise your constitutional rights. Second, let’s say you lose your Colorado permit. You couldn’t carry here, because Colorado doesn’t recognize a nonresident Florida permit, but you’d still be able to carry in thirty states.”
The only reason I would “lose” a Colorado permit would be if, say, I committed a violent felony or beat up Margaret and had a restraining order placed on me. Florida was willing, even then, to step in and allow me to continue to carry a gun.
For the live-fire portion of the class, we got into our own cars and followed Rob across metro Denver—thirty minutes of our three hours—to a grimy shooting range in a shopping center. Five of the six lanes were taken up by young black guys teaching their girlfriends to shoot, with lots of whooping and laughing amid deafening blasts of nine-millimeters and .45s. My classmates and I filed to the sixth lane and, one by one, snapped off twenty shots from a long-barreled .22 target pistol. As preparation for defending ourselves with a gun, it was about as useful as learning to cook an omelet. We emerged, heads ringing from the concussions of the nine-millimeters and .45s, and Rob was there to hand us a certificate, xeroxed onto faux parchment.
“You can’t possibly believe this class has prepared me to carry a gun,” I said.
“This class has met the
legal requirement
to carry a gun,” he said. “There’s a difference. I strongly recommend more training.”
The shooting portions of the classes had reminded me why I rarely took my guns to the range. I hated the noise. So, in for a penny, in for a pound: As long as I was going to carry a gun, I decided to look into getting a silencer for it.
The first silencer I ever saw was the one Oddjob used to dispatch Solo—before having him crushed inside a Lincoln Continental—in
Goldfinger
. I was eight years old. The elegance of that long tube protruding
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