Utah young adults putting gun law to use
SALT LAKE CITY — Each aisle she turned down, he seemed to be there.
And when Jacee Cole went to check out, he was there by the cash registers, too.
She didn’t know who he was or what he wanted or why he was watching her.
“I think I’m being followed,” she whispered to her mom on her phone. “I don’t know what to do.”
As Cole pulled out of the grocery store parking lot, the man appeared again in her rearview mirror and tailed her into her Magna neighborhood. She called police, but he drove off before officers arrived. She worried he would come back.
So last year, shortly after the state green-lighted Utahns as young as 18 to get concealed carry permits, she completed the training and bought a 9mm handgun. She was 19.
Since the reduced age limit took effect on May 9, the state has issued more than 1,400 permits for 18- to 20-year-olds to carry concealed firearms. That includes 107 in January.
And in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Florida last month, gun rights advocates expect that the numbers will go up even more as young adults search for a sense of security in a handgun.
Most in the state didn’t support the measure when Gov. Gary Herbert signed it into law a year ago. Some 60 percent of residents were opposed, according to a Salt Lake Tribune-hinckley Institute of Politics poll conducted in March 2017. Women disliked the measure by an even larger margin, at 69 percent opposed, compared with 52 percent of men.
And its most loyal defenders are, of course, the ones who want to carry.
Jared Larson slipped his right hand under his jacket and pulled out a small pistol. There wasn’t bullet in the chamber but, to be safe, he aimed it at a watercolor of pink flowers hanging in his parents’ living room.
Larson, 20, got the gun last month from a private seller. After a student was shot and killed at the University of Utah in October, he felt afraid each time he left his Centerville home.
The $450 firearm felt like an investment in his life and his future. He carries it nearly everywhere.
Each mass shooting in the past year — 58 people killed in Las Vegas, 26 in Texas, 17 in Florida — has further confirmed his resolve.
“The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun,” Larson said like a mantra, “is to have as many good guys with guns as possible.”
Most public universities and colleges in Utah permit concealed firearms on campus, but they are banned at the privately owned Brigham
Young University, LDS Business College and Westminster College.
Guy Bolduc brings his handgun to classes at Salt Lake Community College. For him, it’s both a precaution and “a way of life.”
“It’s not just a superstition why I carry it,” said Bolduc, 20. “Anything can happen at any time, and I want to protect others if a situation arises.”
That responsibility, he said, the thought that he might have to be willing to take another person’s life, adds some weight to a gun that’s roughly 48 ounces.
Last year, Utah’s new provisional permit made up less than 2 percent of the more than 68,000 concealed carry permits the state issued. It isn’t much, but Cole believes it’s enough to send a message.
“At least I’m not defenseless,” she said.