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Colorado Concealed Carry Permit (courtesy xdtalk.com)

In my last post – Hot Coffee and Cold Comfort in Colorado – I wrote that I was looking forward to getting a non-resident Colorado concealed carry permit. Alert members of TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia pointed out that Colorado doesn’t offer a non-resident concealed carry. So I can’t get one. Correct. Unfortunately, I didn’t know this until my post published. I’ve amended the text and published an apology at the bottom of the Coffee post. The reason I thought that I could get a non-resident Colorado concealed carry permit was . . .

that’s what a Colorado concealed carry class instructor told me. To be clear, when I booked his course, I made it perfectly clear that I was NOT a Colorado resident. In between the last post and this one, I’ve talked to the instructor. He admitted that he didn’t know if I could or not get a Colorado concealed carry permit as an out-of-state resident. Sigh.

As part of my post-flub research, I called the county in which my mother lives to clarify the law on concealed carry. The nice woman working at the Sheriff’s department told me I cannot obtain the permit without a Colorado driver’s license. Period.

I had – and still have – no intention of breaking the law and claiming Colorado residency. I simply wanted to carry inside The Rocky Mountain State legally. I repeat, I would not have lied and claimed Colorado residency simply to get a carry permit. My right to keep in bear arms is very important to me, but not to the point that I would bend and stretch the laws; or flat-out break a law.

My apologies for the original post. I’ve learned a valuable lesson about fact checking. I’ll work harder to make sure I get my facts straight in the future. Thanks for keeping me honest, and helping me tell the truth about guns.

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47 COMMENTS

  2. But that isn’t what you wrote. You wrote that you had already taken the class and were waiting for the certificate to arrive in the mail at your mom’s house.

    • Yup, just establish residency in WY, then you will be GTG with a WY CHL. And a WY CHL is $74.50 for the initial and $50.00 for renewal every five years. Not as good as SD (where I’m from and have a CHL from), but not bad. No class, no extraneous requirements, nice and easy.

  4. I would be asking for a refund on the course. Sounds like you were very specific about what you were looking for and the instructor just filled a seat in his class.

  5. You .. you mean you made a mistake? You’re HUMAN? You corrected it? I am offended! Offended I tell you!

    • Yep. My friend was the plantif in the Peterson case against Colorado for non resident permits.

      The useless republicans on the 10th circuit told him to drop dead.

      CO will only issue to someone who has a residence or real property.

    • Every state with a list of “states whose permits are not recognized” is like this.

      There’s one state that has been commonly cited as being “constitutional carry” that is only so if you happen to be a resident (WY). Fortunately (for me at least) they recognize CO permits.

      The peculiar thing about Colorado is that you can be a non resident of some OTHER state (but with a permit from that otherwise-accepted state) and get discriminated against. It’s one thing to be a non-resident of Colorado and have Colorado treat you like crap, it’s another for Colorado to treat you like crap just because you aren’t a resident of Utah or Florida… uh, whatdafucque?

  7. FYI military do not need a co drivers license. Just a minor note. I have a fl permit, with Texas DL. since I moved to CO I will be getting a CO permit, just need to get through the hollidays

  8. Why not just get the Wyoming CCW once residency is established? CO accepts that. Also, pretty much everywhere outside city and county of Denver allows open carry as it is an open carry state. We even have campus carry. Many of the rights that “free” states are fighting for and are so excited about are what we have had in place for years. While the 2013 legislation that passed was both unnecessary and unfortunate, much of the state is still very firearms friendly. One doesn’t have to look hard to find “banned” magazines for sale and no, they are not brought in from out of state nor do you have to purchase them “on the street.” Much of the LE I have spoken with is very pro-2A and do not support the passed legislation. Denver is another story, but once you head west of I-25 or south of the Denver County line, you are back in a mostly-free land.

  9. Outside of the city/county limits of Denver you can open carry nearly everywhere. It is normal in most mountain/plains towns and very common in most of the Front Range cities south of Denver.

  10. Yep. Colorado is now the only state in middle America in which I cannot carry. Not unless IL starts recognizing CO’s permits or I move to a state that does.

    • From what I understand, the main reason some states do not recognize CO reciprocity is because colorado InstaCheck does not operate 24 hours a day. Strange reason but that’s what I was told in the case of VA reciprocity.

      • Interesting datum. However, Illinois isn’t one of those particular states. They don’t discriminate, they hate all out-of-state permits (except that they will allow any out of state permittee to conceal while in the car).

        Colorado will recognize residential permits from any state that will recognize its permits. Occasionally I will see someone from a state like Illinois or Minnesota (fussy about other states’ permits) bitch about Colorado and I simply tell them to go bark up a tree closer to their house.

        • To clarify, I’m not talking about CentralIL in that last paragraph, he/she understands the problem.

  11. Sara,
    You can carry in Colorado just not concealed and within the city limits of Denver. Former Colorado resident and Firearms instructor. I moved out of state when the magazine mess started.

    If you can’t open carry then your 2nd amendment rights are being violated (and they are in Denver city limits).

  12. So, no apology for outright lie you told in the original article? Got it. So zero integrity. Got it. I’ll never read another article by Sara Tipton again.

    • I did apologize. I am sorry. But here’s a formal and official apology to you, sir, for not looking into the CO concealed carry more before writing about it. I’m sorry.

      • But will Erik apologize for his not understanding your clarification of what Sara meant by “certificate”? Misunderstanding Sara’s original post is acceptable (I also misunderstood, and Sara has acknowledged that it wasn’t clear), but continued mis-labeling is not. I don’t know if Erik is legitimate or troll, but his lack of apology is a negative indicator.

  13. The class I took was several months ago. My father and I took it together. This certificate I’m awaiting is a copy of the one I have at home saying I’ve passed the course. I signed up for another class anyway to relearn any new laws that may have been added or changed because I thought that would valuable information to have. Again, I am sorry.

    • Sara, F the bozos!

      All people make mistakes, and mistakes are opportunities to learn, take it as such.

      I have much more respect for someone who is able to stand up and admit to a failure, and make apologies than I do for the man who is quick to point fingers.

      We should also note that this is in large part the design of the anti second amendment people. To create a labyrinthine patchwork of laws and regulations, making it all but impossible for the law abiding citizen to adhere to when traveling in these states. Laws are difficult to understand, vary by state and even county, and change over time. It is our responsibility to know and follow these laws but people are human and even the best intentioned of us can fail at this.

      Even knowing the laws and following them can lead to us being forced into situations where laws are broken on our part out of our control. Note the case of Greg Revell who was put in New Jersey with his luggage containing a locked handgun because of a missed connection, and he was then arrested.

      http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/18/traveling-mans-gun-arrest-appealed-supreme-court.html

      This is unconscionable, but it is exactly what the anti 2a crowd wants. Laws so convoluted and bodged up from one state to the next that the law abiding can barely keep up with them, and almost impossible to adhere to when we go about our normal lives.

      And this is what you got caught up in, albeit on a far smaller scale.

      This should be a lesson to us all; be very aware of what we are doing in traveling from state to state with our firearms and to check and double check. Take nothing for granted.

      Sara,

      [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzit2lzaCvk&w=560&h=315%5D

  14. Hey Sara, you’re human. You made a mistake and corrected it. Enough with the apologies. I am sure the d bags making a big deal about this have possibly, just possibly, made a mistake before in their work. I mean, I haven’t, but I am more super human than human. You are a great writer and great addition to TTAG. Move on girl.

  15. Colorado honors Arizona’s permit. (and we will give you one on the basis of having any other state’s permit, or a DD-214, or Active Military ID, or a bunch of other reasons)

    We don’t have resident or non-resident permits, just permits.

    • True that, but show a Colorado cop your Arizona Permit and your New Jersey driver’s license and Colorado will still refuse to recognize the permit. So that’s not a way around our stupid f*cking “non residential” rule.

  16. I usually can find something useful in Ms. Tipton’s posts, but I’m beginning to think she writes when she has not much to say.

    Nothing wrong with taking a little vacation now and then, Sara.

  17. Hopefully you get back to a bit firmer grounding in terms of CCW eligibility or can find a state that reciprocates. Life intervenes on our goals, but if we stick to things we often meet our objectives.

    To err is to be human, to admit fault is a sign of integrity and character.

  19. I didn’t realize that the permits from different counties differ as much as they do. Mine has a nice skyline in the back, the CO flag in the lower right, my height, weight, hair, etc. BUT NO ADDRESS. And, some sort of seal embedded in the permit that you can only see if the light is just right. And, my mustache in my photo is both real and gray.

  20. Sara- welcome to being human. We screw up from time to time. It takes integrity to apologize and take your lumps, lord knows it would be easier to just let it go uncorrected. Good job and carry on.

  21. My right to keep in bear arms is very important to me, but not to the point that I would bend and stretch the laws; or flat-out break a law.

    I sighed when I read this. I can only hope that you don’t mean that the way I took it. Sure, I wouldn’t be inclined to break a law obtaining a privilege. However I would break any law to preserve my exercise of my right to keep and bear arms under the right circumstances. I regularly engage in a cost / benefit analysis when faced with following a law that may be infringing upon my rights. The law doesn’t always win in that analysis.

    Civil disobedience or fighting an outright revolution would require you and me to break some laws. If it comes to that, I hope you don’t intend on sitting out the fight. If that’s the case, how actually important are your individual rights to you?

    I don’t recommend answering that question in a public forum. The purpose of my post was to highlight the thinking, if that is the way you intended it, for yourself and others. Hopefully, there is some point along the spectrum of one’s rights being infringed that each of us would be willing to break some laws in order to preserve the exercise of those rights.

  22. A bunch of people in the previous article said that your permit could not be mailed to you, that you had to pick it up from the issuing office. I call absolute BS, because mine, and my wife’s, were mailed. El Paso County mails their permits out, you do not have to pick it up. The last one I received was in 2012, so maybe it has changed now.

  23. What I find odd is that a bunch of supposed hard-core 2nd Amendment types sound like whiny 2nd graders because someone might have bent a regulation (not law) about obtaining a permit for a Right.

  24. Part of the “genius” of more gun control laws is the difficulty of knowing/understanding the laws in every jurisdiction that we, in a mobile society, might enter.

    For example, I would love to hunt in Pennsylvania or Maine, but it would mean taking my rifle/ammo into Mass, NY, or NJ on the way.

    For all I know, my LeveRevolution ammo is a “Hollow Point” under NJ law and thus a Capital offense.

    I would bet $100 that virtually 100% of the readers on this blog have unintentionally violated and/or misinterpreted a gun law.

    • I for one won’t take that bet.

      Just for example, I’ve been unable to figure out what a non-Illinois, non-permit holder is allowed to do there. (At best, not much, at worst, nothing at all, not even have one in the hotel room.) There are plenty of resources at the Illinois State Police site that (reading between the lines) seem aimed at IL residents (they are aimed at people with a FOAD [sic] card). Nada (unless something has changed recently) for out-of-staters.

      It’s possible to find some information about states online…so it could be much, much worse. But then you’ll run into a state which doesn’t preempt its localities, and then you’re stuck unless you want to wade through endless municipal codes. For example, if you’re driving across such a state, it’s theoretically necessary to check the laws of every single wide spot in the road you will be traveling on.

  25. Sara,

    I appreciate your willingness to check what you were told and admit a mistake. Most people seem to have accepted that. But I do see ONE PERSON (“Erik”) continuing to hound you for some reason. Ignore him. I intend to.

    You haven’t mentioned if you have your WY permit yet, but if you do…I hope you use it here with confidence and have enjoyable visits in spite of hoplophobe relatives and friends.

    I’m more concerned (now) that there is a company giving out concealed carry classes that (at best) is too ignorant to be worth patronizing. How many other bits of wrong info are they dishing out without realizing it? Anything that might get you in prison? At worst, these people are outright knowing frauds.

    Honestly I think their names ought to be publicized, either way. Even if honest, they’re hazards, and if dishonest, they need to go out of business if not into jail.

    I got to watch as a certain jackass behind the counter of a gun store/range told an elderly lady her (Colorado) permit was good ONLY in my county (El Paso, where Colorado Springs is and the most populous county in the state), but (my recollection is a bit fuzzier on this last point) that she could open carry even in Denver. I kept trying to set this bozo straight but I could see she believed him (because he was behind the counter), not me. I hope she never open carried in Denver, believing she wasn’t allowed to conceal.

  26. The rules change all the time. I’m licensed in Wa . Oregon, and Utah.. and every couple of months I research which States have changed their rules.. I guess Virginia is no longer recognizing Washingtons License now…Gotta stay on top of it….

  27. Same problem white south carolina no permit for non residenzler.
    The 3 other states (Maine, Florida and New Hampshire) are all shall issue for non residenzler and maine have constistunal carry ore 4 states it looks oregon is shall issue too.

  28. One of the things I highly respect about this blog (meaning it’s writers and editors, really) is that they are willing to admit when they are wrong. That’s huge to me. Big respect. It’s not easy to do so.

  29. Try getting a state ID card – usually that will allow you to have the same rights and privileges while in-state – except for driving, without a license, of course. Or perhaps find out which other state’s CCL permits that CO does honor to see if your CA or WY permits would be honored.

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