Rocky Mountain Gun Owners vs. small town library?

 

WINDSOR — It’s shaping up to be a small town showdown straight out of an old West tale: gun-rights group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners is threatening to wage a legal battle on its own turf against the Clearview Library District in Windsor, where RMGO is also based.

The dust-up was spurred when librarians asked mother Erika Sattler to leave the Windsor-Severance Library after another patron noticed Sattler’s concealed handgun. Librarians apparently advised Sattler that guns are prohibited at the library unless being carried by law enforcement. Sattler gathered up her children and departed, but while she may have lost the battle RMGO has rallied to help her win the war. 

The gun-rights group sprang into action Tuesday, notifying the library district that Colorado state law allows people to carry concealed weapons lots of places, including libraries, and demanding that they change the rules during their next board meeting on Thursday, August 28, lest RMGO take it to the courts.

“Criminal safe zones are target-rich zones, leaving our children and loved ones vulnerable to those with malicious intent,” said RMGO Executive Director Dudley Brown. “A library should be a place where all freedom is recognized and supported, not just a place for freedom of speech.”

Library director Ann Kling got back from vacation the day after RMGO sent out its letter and told The Colorado Independent that she’ll need to talk to library staff, board members and attorneys before making any decisions or comments.

When not agitating to make libraries a safe place for gunnies, RMGO takes aim at state politics and Colorado elections with a pro-gun SuperPAC. In fact, RMGO lawyer James Bardwell notes that they helped write and get passed the very state laws the Clearview Library District is apparently violating with their no guns policy.

“I look forward to your positive response,” Bardwell writes closing RMGO’s legal notice, “and to avoiding litigation which would be a waste of the resources of the library district.”


[Image from marsmettnn tallahassee]

7 COMMENTS

  1. “Criminal safe zones are target rich zones leaving our children and loved ones vulnerable to those with malicious intent”? Right, unless of course there’s a “good guy” with a gun nearby in which case the good guy gets trigger happy and starts shooting and the criminal does likewise.

    Pandemonium ensues while the bullets fly and everyone scrambles for the exits. Chances are the good guy could end up dead along with a few of those “vulnerable kids and loved ones” Dudley talks about. What then.

    The Rocky Mountain Gun Owners come to the rescue with their simplistic solutions to a very complex issue. No thanks. Please keep your concealed heat out of our so called “target rich” zones.

  2. Let’s get real, here, shall we? You do NOT need a gun in the library. You do NOT need a gun in WalMart, King Soopers or any other store. You do NOT need a gun in about 99.99999% of places in this society.

    And then you go walking around to make us all “more comfortable” with you showing off your guns. Never occurred to you that a whole lot of us DON’T WANT to be comfortable around your miserable guns, did it? Why do WE have to bend over backwards and overcome OUR natural tendencies to NOT want to be around weapons to make YOU happy?

    I’m a big wood working fan. I don’t go carrying my chisels and saws around, forcing everyone to behold them in all their glory, do I? Nope. Only time you’ll see one of mine is on the way home from the store. I have a RIGHT to have them anywhere I want, but I don’t make everyone else look at them all the time. I understand it’s CHILDISH to do so. Why don’t these gun nuts get that?

    A family just took their 9 year old child to a gun range, where she accidentally killed the gun range instructor trying to show WAY too small a child how to use an UZI. This is the type of stupidity that they want us to accept as just another day in America. And sadly, because of nut cases all over this country, it is.

    When do the rights of us who want a PEACEFUL society start to matter?

  3. […] “It’s shaping up to be a small town showdown straight out of an old West tale: gun-rights group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners is threatening to wage a legal battle on its own turf against the Clearview Library District in Windsor, where RMGO is also based.The dust-up was spurred when librarians asked mother Erika Sattler to leave the Windsor-Severance Library after another patron noticed Sattler’s concealed handgun. Librarians apparently advised Sattler that guns are prohibited at the library unless being carried by law enforcement. Sattler gathered up her children and departed, but while she may have lost the battle RMGO has rallied to help her win the war.” (via The Colorado Independent) […]

  4. We need to Kickstart our own super PAC to buy large, showy, LEGAL, rifles, and arm a large group of Black women and men, and Latina/os to pay their travel expenses, food, lodging and a good salary (obviously with huge, major health and medical insurance fully covered) to send them, with a large camera crew, (which may provide a tiny bit of safety?) to open carry states where these “displays of the Second Amendment Rights” are being held.

    The staunch supporters of anti gun regulation SHOULD have no reason not to support a large group of heavily armed people of color joining them. Everyone knows at this point it’s the unarmed ones that are so dangerous that they need to be shot on sight, or choked to death, or handcuffed and beaten to death, by the police, who only do this to protect us.

    People of color would be a lot safer from the police if they always carried licensed firearms, concealed where legal. The NRA clearly states over and over, that we’d all be safer armed, I assume that goes for people of color as well? We can stop Black on Black violence in places like Chicago and Detroit completely, by NRA logic, just by getting legal firearms into the possession of every Black non-criminal woman and man of legal age in the area.

    All the places where this is a big problem are blighted by extreme poverty, so the NRA may have to pony up and offer discounted, cheaper models. And the government can only afford to arm other armies’ soldiers in the Middle East, (otherwise Halliburton wouldn’t show a big enough profit, and too many high ranking politicians in the D.C. area might not be able to hoard enough money or something? What do you even do with money when you get up to a certain point?) BUT they can distribute all the firearms they have stockpiled from confiscation from criminals and “turn in your guns, no questions asked” drives that the police use to keep all the guns off the streets, because they know from experience that fewer guns will make us all safer…

    It’s a conundrum , but with thoughtful discourse, SECOND AMENDMENT! IT’S OUR GOD GIVEN RIGHT TO CARRY AROUND AN ASSAULT RIFLE TO PROTECT THE SANCTITY…THE CHILDREN…OR SOMETHING…

  5. Until a few years ago if your neighbor carried a rake in his hand as he gathered up the typical leaves of fall it didn’t attract your attention….heck it could have been a hunting rifle. Every year Colorado attracts a billion (B) dollars in spending on hunting licenses and fishing EVERY YEAR!
    Not spooky, not scary, it’s something you want at a library, school, or movie theater.
    Colorado is an “open carry” state where you must have a concealed carry license to hide your weapon. Just because a legally concealed weapon is visible under clothing like in the library, on any CSU campus or into a bank doesn’t make self defense illegal.
    Time to put on your big boy pants.

Comments are closed.