Ready, Aim, Firing Range
A few months ago, I wrote a story about a man who believed the D.C. handgun ban would be determined unconstitutional once and for all by the Supreme Court.
Well, he was right!
The man, James Wiggins Jr., had long been licensed as a handgun instructor teaching security officers and others. But, he was so confident in his thinking that he was already marketing gun safety classes to D.C. residents. (That's him up there, by the way, peeking out behind the target.)
Well, today, not surprisingly, Wiggins is in an awfully cheerful mood. He first called me around noon to say hello and discuss the news. Then, we talked again in the early afternoon.
Not only is Wiggins having his 15 minutes of fame after being featured on WUSA9 recently, he's also ready to unveil new business plans. When Wiggins and I first chatted in late April, he mentioned that he was hoping to open up a gun range when the ban was officially overturned. At that point, he was pretty tight-lipped about the entire thing and unwilling to say too much. But not now!
"I'm going to be at the licensing place [DCRA] in the morning and start posing questions. Then, I'm going to have to hire a lobbyist," he says.
Wiggins says he's pulled together $30 million in financial backing, from private investors--"people I've trained," he says, vaguely--for his new project. "I will try to put [this facility] on the MD/DC line. I'm definitely going for it. I'm going to call it the DC safety center. I can also teach you first aid, CPR."
Comments
Leave a Reply
You can follow any responses to this entry through its comments RSS feed.
11:37 am
Well, I was a DC resident living alone and I am totally in favor of the legalization of handguns. Everyone is not going to run out and buy one as people think. I've lived in 3 other states where hand guns were allowed, and that didn't happen. Nor were there a slew of accidental shootings, which again has happened in DC before this ban lifting. Criminals already have illegal guns, so this doesn't necessarily mean there will be more crime...Hello--How many shootings were happening in DC up till this point, prior to the lifting of the ban? law abiding citizens needed the ban lifted. DC does need to put a law into place regarding training requirments for anyone to get a gun registered in city limits and/or before purchase in DC ones purchasing places open for this kind of thing.