As most of you know, I live in Colorado in a small town outside of Colorado Springs. We’ve had a rough couple of months, from the fire that destroyed 346 home and damaged countless others, to the senseless shooting in an Aurora movie theater that claimed 12 lives. Whenever a terrible tragedy like this happens, the rhetoric on gun control is always dialed up. Some people demand that we have stricter gun laws, then we would have less gun violence. Disarming the law-abiding population is not the answer. In fact, this particular shooting was an example as to why. All of those people in the movie theater were unarmed, because guns are not allowed in the building. The shooter knew he wasn’t going to have any opposition when he went on his rampage. Criminals, by definition, do not follow the laws/rules. If we have stricter gun control, the criminals will still find ways to get around them.

I’ll admit, if someone in that theater had broken the rules and was armed that night, he or she would have had little to no chance of hitting the shooter. It was dark, the movie was playing, there was tear gas in the air, and there were people screaming and trying to get out of the theater. The shooter was in head-to-toe body armor, and the only place to shoot him to stop him was an area approximately two by three inches on his face. However, if people were allowed to have their guns in more places, maybe criminals would think twice about taking on the public, because they wouldn’t know who was armed and who was not. The only way we can get our society to see this is education. People who are anti-gun are usually just ignorant of the real gun community. All they see is what is shown in the media, which is usually negative. Very rarely do I see a story where a gun has stopped a crime or saved a life. That is not the real gun community, and it is sad that we all have bad reputation because of the criminals that only want to hurt others with their guns.

My hat goes off to our Govenor, John Hickenlooper. First he was dealing with the fires all over our state, and then he has to go in front of the media about this horrific event. What I respect most about him is even though he is generally anti-gun, when asked about stricter gun laws, he didn’t go on the attack at all; “You know, I worry that if we got rid all of the guns, and certainly we have so many guns in this country, we do have a lot more gun violence than many other countries — but even if you didn’t have access to guns, this guy was diabolical. Right? He would have found explosives, he would have found something else, some sort of poisonous gas, he would have done something to create this horror.”

So come to Colorado and see us. We may have a few burn scars and scars on our hearts, but our community is strong. We have wonderful gun laws as I have said in other posts, and a state full of beautiful scenery and great outdoor activities.