Colorado Town Passes Ordinance Mandating Gun Ownership

Another small town in rural America is putting its foot down and making a statement about the importance of one’s right to keep and bear arms.

Nucla, Colorado, a town located approximately 50 miles south of Grand Junction, is taking a cue from Nelson, Georgia, and mandating that each head of household keep a firearm for self-defense.

Earlier this month, by a vote of 5-1, the Nucla community council passed it’s own version of Nelson’s Family Protection Ordinance,” which reads:

In order to provide for the emergency management of the city, and further in order to provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants, every head of household residing in the city limits is required to maintain a firearm, together with ammunition therefore.

Town Trustee and pro tem Mayor Richard Craig spoke to local news affiliate KREX about the decision to approve the controversial ordinance.

“Every head of the household residing in town limits is required to maintain a firearm together with ammunition thereafter. Criminals are put on notice, period. We are armed,” he said, explaining the message that it sends to would-be robbers, thieves and rapists.

“I think my biggest thing is our Second Amendment, that is our right. I don’t think half the people on front range even know what the constitution is, let alone forget it,” Craig continued.

Asked about how the rest of the country would view Nucla now that it’s requiring gun ownership, Craig responded humorously saying, “Some will probably say ‘yay’ and some of them would probably think we’re a bunch of banjo-playing, glow-in-the-dark idiots.”

While it appears that the majority of the town’s 750 residents support the ‘Family Protection Ordinance,’ there is at least one man who doesn’t: Nucla Town Trustee Bill Long, who voted against the measure.

“We’re not being consistent, saying we don’t want government in our lives but here we are saying everybody’s got to own a gun,” Long said.

Long said that he understands the symbolic importance of the ordinance, but still doesn’t believe it’s an appropriate response to the gun control bills recently signed into law by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.

“It’s basically just saying look, we know we have Second Amendment rights. We have our guns, we love our guns and it’s going to be a fight if you try to take them away.”

As with Nelson and Kennesaw, Georgia, which was the first town to pass such an ordinance in 1982, the Nucla law contains certain exemptions, such as those who are physically or mentally handicapped as well as those individuals who are conscientious objectors or oppose to gun ownership for religious reasons.

In other words, mandatory gun ownership is not really enforced. The ordinance is merely a political statement to lawmakers at the state and federal level who are constantly pushing a gun control agenda — as Long pointed out.

Though, despite the fact that it is all for show, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has filed a lawsuit against Nelson arguing that the ordinance violates citizens’ First, Second, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

“Most Americans reject the gun lobby’s vision of an America in which the government can force guns into every sector of society,” said Brady Center’s Legal Action Project Director Jonathan Lowy, in a press release. “In this lawsuit we seek to establish that the government does not have the authority to compel Americans to buy guns or bring them into their homes.”

“Forcing residents to buy guns they do not want or need won’t make the City of Nelson or its people any safer, and only serves to increase gun sales and gun industry profits,” continued Lowy. “A gun brought into your home is far more likely to be used to injure or kill a family member, than to ward off an intruder.”

It’ll be interesting to see how the Brady’s lawsuit against Nelson will play out. Whatever the courts decide, it will likely have a bearing on Nucla, Kennesaw, and any other town or city that has passed or plans on passing a version of the ‘Family Protection Ordinance.’

TAMPA — A Hillsborough circuit judge says someone forged his initials on an altered search warrant used to arrest a man on drug trafficking charges.

Ruskin defense attorney Paul S. Carr believes a member of the Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office is responsible.

Those revelations Tuesday had sheriff’s authorities suggesting it was a misunderstanding and prosecutors vowing to look into the alleged discrepancies. If true, they could jeopardize a drug bust that netted large amounts of prescription pills, plus cash, cocaine and marijuana.

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Carr wants his client’s case dismissed.

“You cannot commit crimes to catch criminals,” he said.

On Oct. 13, 2006, Circuit Judge Chet A. Tharpe signed a search warrant allowing detectives to hunt for drugs in a Brandon apartment. Under oath, Detective Ronnie Cooper told the judge that an informer had on two occasions purchased oxycodone pills from Christopher Snipes there.

The detective believed that the residence was being used as a distribution point and supply house for oxycodone, court records show.

During an Oct. 14 search led by Cooper, deputies found drugs, a pistol, drug paraphernalia in the apartment and $5,953 in Snipes’ pocket, arrest records show.

They said Snipes, 25, admitted that the drugs were his. He was arrested on multiple charges that carry a 25-year minimum mandatory prison sentence.

Snipes hired Carr in March.

By then, public defenders had failed to convince a judge to throw out the evidence against Snipes on the grounds that detectives searched the wrong apartment.

The original search warrant was for an apartment numbered 203. But someone had crossed out that number in two places and replaced it with 208. Snipes’ public defenders said detectives had not provided probable cause to search 208; Circuit Judge Daniel Sleet denied their motion.

The handwritten changes, rare though not unheard of, also caught Carr’s attention.

But as the attorney sat in bed one night reviewing the case, something else stuck out.

The initials “CAT” had been written in twice alongside the revised apartment numbers. Those are Tharpe’s initials.

However, Carr didn’t think the pair of initials matched the judge’s handwriting. He took his suspicions and samples of Tharpe’s penmanship to handwriting experts. Two forensic document examiners agreed that someone other than Tharpe altered the search warrant.

Carr didn’t realize his client had already written Tharpe a letter in February, asking the judge to verify whether the initials by the revised numbers were his.

“The initials do not look like your handwriting compared to the actual warrant, and I believe Detective Cooper changed it on his own,” Snipes wrote.

In his sworn statement May 7, Tharpe was adamant that he did not alter the search warrant.

“The handwritten alterations and initials … are not my true initials, is not my handwriting and were not placed there by me,” Tharpe said.

Carr thinks the changes likely were made by Cooper or Deputy Stuart Bell, who helped supervise the case’s informer.

Bell was fired after his own arrest in January, accused by internal affairs detectives of stealing prescription bottles from a suspect’s house, falsifying two incident reports and doctor shopping for prescription medication.

In his motion to dismiss Snipes’ case, Carr said whoever changed the search warrant should be investigated for charges including forgery, official misconduct, perjury and false arrest.

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Debbie Carter said the agency has confidence in Cooper, whom she called an exemplary employee since his 1997 hiring.

Carter said officials were looking into the allegations.

“At this point, there’s a possibility of a misunderstanding,” she said. “The judge signs hundreds of documents for us, and it could just be a matter of memory.”

Michael Sinacore, felony bureau chief for the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office, said prosecutors would investigate the validity of the search warrant.

After a court hearing for her son Tuesday, Brenda Snipes admitted he wasn’t a “total angel.” Christopher Snipes already has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for a March 2006 armed drug trafficking case in Pinellas County. But “it doesn’t matter,” his mother said. “This is still wrong.”

Colleen Jenkins can be reached at cjenkins@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3337.