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Armed and dangerous; maybe not

I was reading a story the other day about the Colorado state lawmaker who was arrested for carrying a loaded gun at Denver International Airport. In her case, the District Attorney decided that she forgot the gun was in her purse, and didn’t file charges.

I can sympathize with that lawmaker.

During my first visit to the Colorado State Capitol in Denver I was going through security and they found my pocketknife. I totally would have taken that out of my purse had I remembered it was in there. The guards were very polite and took my knife for safe keeping until I left the building.



I can only assume — because they didn’t seem a bit surprised at their finding — that I am not the only woman in Denver that carries a weapon. I was happy to get the knife back because the blade is engraved with “The Fence Post.”

I wouldn’t have even had to carry the knife had the Canadian custom’s officers not taken my stun gun from me when I was crossing the border from Alaska into Canada. They were not as nice as the guards in at the State Capitol in Denver.



They told me that there is no reason for a woman to carry a weapon in Canada because they don’t have any crime like we do in the U.S. Those Canadians, they are always bragging.

I have never carried a handgun, but I once thought about it very seriously and even took a course to get a conceal to carry permit in North Dakota.

At that time, a woman had been kidnapped from the parking lot of the local shopping mall and was killed. That made a lot of women in town nervous.

So I decided I would write a column about it and take the course.

The course I took was only for women and there were six of us out in a field swatting mosquitoes as the instructor handed us our weapons.

Then it was chaos. I had shot a gun before at deer and gophers, and I knew not to point the muzzle at anyone even if it wasn’t loaded. But the other women had obviously not handled a gun before and they were pointing them everywhere. I could not duck and bolt fast enough and was sure I was going to be shot.

Finally the instructor took control and told them to hold the weapons with the muzzle pointing to the ground when they weren’t shooting.

I never did get a permit or a handgun because I didn’t want be responsible for it if it was ever stolen and used to shoot someone. Which, as you can see, based on my luck with weapons, probably would have happened. ❖


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