Disneyland for Gun Lovers
Choose the Gun of Your Dreams
I was driving back home this morning after getting my daughter a medium ice coffee and hash browns at Dunkin Donuts when I stopped at the light behind a pick-up truck advertising “Gun For Hire” with the image of a bullet on the letter “I.” I thought it was strange and my first reaction was the old television series, “Have Gun Will Travel” about a fictional hired gun named Paladin, played by Richard Boone who died of throat cancer in 1981.
At home I googled “Gun For Hire” and found the company has nothing to do with Paladin. You can’t hire a gunman at “Gun For Hire” but you can rent from more than 200 different kinds of firearms, from basic revolvers and semi-automatic pistols to high power rifles and tactical shotguns, and then shoot, shoot, shoot until you drop (figuratively) at the Woodland Park range run by the company which calls itself “America’s Urban Defense Institute Since 1992.”
“Rent as many firearms as you like,” says the website.
And just flip to the Facebook page and join with 1,916 people who “liked” the page and the “Gun for Hire Radio: New Jersey’s First and Only 2nd Amendment Talk Show!” with the best and most recent information about everything about guns and knives.
Anthony P. Colandro founded “Gun For Hire” in 1992 “to promote the positive aspects of safe and responsible firearms ownership.” But a little research shows there’s more than bit of right wing politics in the background.
The website shows Colandro in front of a wall of hundreds of firearms that can be rented to shoot at the Woodland Park range. And for any student who has taken Colandro’s basic class and has been shooting for more than six months, they are eligible for the “Advanced Weaponcraft” class where students “receive intensive, one-on-one training on stress situations, malfunctions, night shooting, barricade shooting, multiple targets, and high speed reloads. This is NOT for the novice but when you have completed Advanced Weaponcraft, you will be able to confidently handle a firearm in a self-defense situation.”
There are also seminars on such topics as home invasion defense and how to “harden your home against an invasion, and how to handle an actual invasion should it occur. This is a must for anyone who is concerned for the safety of their loved ones.” You can also learn the fine arts of handcuffs, expandable batons and pepper spray.
Colandro is a member of the board of trustees of the National Rifle Association and graduated in 1992 from something called the “Lethal Force Institute,” based in Concord, N.H., and founded by Massad F. Ayoob, a former police officer in New Hampshire who also is president of the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights organization based in Bellevue, Wash.
Colandro’s LinkedIn page says he is author of “Crime Proof. Think Like a Criminal and Beat Them at Their Own Game” available for just $18.76 and why he picked the price of $18.76 is strange unless he was referring to June 25, 1876, the date of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer or may be July 8, 1876, the day when white supremacists killed five Black Republicans in Hamburg, S.C. I don’t know.
Colandro has expressed strong feelings against Muslims and liberals, as in the gun4hyr Facebook post, “Coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Multiculturalism equals we all die together under Islam” and “Stop importing the parasitic non assimilating cult you call Islam” and a few choice tweets, like on @realDonaldTrump, “Liberals are allahs useful idiots. Like turkeys campaigning or thanksgiving. They will defend and deny as their heads are removed by Islam” and one @547George, “ Islam is a parasitic cult. They are colonizing the west and bring their 14th century ways with them. Wake up liberals.”
It goes without saying that Colandro is a big, big supporter of the right to bear any arms, including those he rents. In a June 2018 interview with Ammoland.com, Colandro said that “progressivism” is the biggest threat “to our Second Amendment rights.”
“Progressivism is like a forest fire. It destroys everything in its path. We have to get back to conservative values and stop the spread of cloaked socialism,” Colandro said.
But getting back to “Gun For Hire,” the website speaks in loving terms about how “there’s no substitute for spending ‘quality time’ with that handgun, rifle, or shotgun” and being allowed to “shoot that dream gun at a range? To see if the sight picture was to your liking? To feel the mechanism working? To experience the recoil? To have a chance to shoot something you had never really considered before?” I have no idea what he is referring to but use your imagination.
And in yet another benefit of renting a dream gun at “Gun For Hire,” you can “impress your friends and business associates every time you say ‘Now let me show you something w-a-a-y cool!” That is really not something I would love to show all my friends and associates.
If you come with a group, you’ll need a photo driver’s license and you can even bring along your 8-year-old son who can shoot long guns with adult supervision and can take rifle or shotgun courses. Children 13 and older can enjoy shooting pistols and take pistol, rife or shotgun courses if accompanied by an adult 21 years of age or older.
By the time I stopped researching “Gun For Hire,” I was glad I hadn’t ordered at Dunkin Donuts because I’m sure I would have thrown it all up.