Colorado Gun Fighter

• What it covers: most semiautomatic rifles and shotguns with detachable magazines, and gas-operated semiauto handguns with detachable magazines. Firearms you already own are not affected.
• Step 1, the card: a firearms safety course eligibility card from a county sheriff. Online application with photo ID, a background check and fees. The card is your ticket into the class, not proof of training. It is good for five years. Counties differ on processing speed, so check with yours.
• Step 2, the class: a state-standardized safety course from a sheriff-verified instructor, completed within the five years before your purchase. A 4-hour basic course if you have CPW-verified hunter education, or a 12-hour extended course over at least two days if you don't. In-person only, with a 90% score to pass the exam.
• CCW is separate: a concealed-carry class does not count toward this, and vice versa.
• Court challenge: a federal case (Del Toro v. Polis) is pending, but no court has blocked the law. This is our plain-English read; the authoritative details live at Colorado Parks & Wildlife.

Colorado Gun Fighter's first storefront opened in December 2015 right here at the lake — in the former game room at Pine River Lodge, where co-owner Dawn had come home to join her family's business (early visitors occasionally wandered in looking for the pool table). The little shop did more business in its first three months than it had projected for its entire first year. In 2018 the couple won Bayfield's approval to relocate — they told the Durango Herald they wanted their sales-tax dollars supporting Bayfield and more room for teaching — and by 2020 the business had upgraded to a larger home on Sawyer Drive in Durango, where it is today. It now describes itself as “the leading firearms retailer in Southwest Colorado and the Four Corners” — and it's still the training-first shop it was in the game-room days.

JJ built the training side on a career of carrying a gun professionally: the U.S. Army, where he was a staff sergeant; a sergeant's post with the Southern Ute Police Department in Ignacio; and service as a Durango Police officer. Certified as a gun instructor by the NRA, he told the Herald back in 2016 that teaching was his favorite part of the job — clients ranged from oil-field crews to staff at a rural school district. That culture shows up in the testimonials the shop shares: first-time buyers — including one who wrote she'd been ignored at other gun shops — describe being treated with patience and respect. And when the Herald covered the shop's 2018 move plans, it reported the store already kept suicide-prevention information on hand, with JJ blunt about it: if an employee has reservations about a sale, “we'll refuse the sale.”