Colorado Law Making Bad Concealed Carry Situation Worse

There is no situation so bad that a law can't make it worse. This is just a basic law of nature, like gravity or Jimmy Kimmel not being funny. It simply is, and trying to pretend otherwise is to ignore the universal truths of this world.

Take Colorado, for example.

It seems that, in their zeal to become the most anti-gun state in the nation, they've decided to take the constitutionally protected right to bear arms--a right affirmed by the Supreme Court in NYSPRA vs. Bruen--and make it even harder for people to get their permits to carry.

How? By passing laws, of course.

A shortage of firearms instructors is continuing to cause chaos for many Colorado citizens, especially in light of recent gun laws for concealed carry licenses.

This is according to Kirk Evans, an attorney specializing in self-defense law and president of U.S. LawShield, who spoke exclusively with The Center Square.

“There are only about 190 verified renewal course instructors in 63 counties. Several counties do not have a verified instructor,” Evans said. “Due to the new requirements to obtain or renew a concealed handgun permit, a shortage of verified firearms instructors in every county, and verification not being the same in every county, many gun owners and instructors are confused and running into problems.”

With some estimates putting the total number of concealed handgun permit holders in Colorado at 650,000, that means that shortage is having a real impact on citizens in the state.

In Colorado, a concealed handgun permit is required to conceal carry a weapon. To obtain that permit, applicants are required to complete a firearms safety training course from a certified instructor. With the permit only lasting five years, that means approximately 132,500 permit holders need to take the new renewal course every year.

“This means that 190 instructors need to teach almost 700 people per year, on average, but many times that in highly populated counties,” Evans said.

Now, in theory, that should lead to instructors having plenty of work, but that assumes that the potential customer base has no problem finding a verified instructor, which isn't necessarily the case.

There's an average of three instructors per county, after all, and unless you know who to turn to, you might have to wade through Google's less-than-spectacular results to find one close to you.

But then there's another issue that has to be accounted for.

An instructor shortage isn’t the only issue, though. Colorado recently enacted a number of controversial gun laws, some of which are already facing legal challenges. On July 1, one of those new laws took effect and changed the permit requirements to also require a live-fire exercise during the training course.

“Of the 190 instructors, only a fraction of them have gun range privileges,” Evans explained. “Those privileges allow them to conduct the live-fire exercises, which are now required to receive a permit."

So of those 190 verified instructors, only a small percentage have the access to fully qualify someone for a carry permit.

That means those 132,500 Colorado permit holders will all be trying to get into classes with, what, 80 instructors who can provide the full training? We don't have the exact number of instructors with range privileges, but even if it's half of them, that's still just 95 instructors for more than 130,000 people.

That's a lot for any single instructor to handle, especially as many aren't full-time instructors. They have full-time jobs and lives. They can't provide training every weekend.

This is, of course, one of the primary issues with training requirements. Those requirements, once allowed, can be expanded over and over until they're untenable. Colorado's requirements don't look onerous on paper to those unfamiliar with the situation on the ground. They might not like the requirement, but they don't see it as the end of the world.

But considering other aspects, such as the lack of trainers, thousands of law-abiding Coloradans will likely be unable to renew their permits each year through no fault of their own.

That's just plain wrong, and we all know it.

It's kind of hard to look at this and think that's not the goal all along, though. Otherwise, why require live fire training at all?

Editor’s Note: The radical left has been leading the anti-gun charge in Colorado and will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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