Armed in America: Why these people in Southwest Florida carry guns

Janine Zeitlin | The News-Press

Earlier this year, The News-Press and the Naples Daily News put out a call for the stories of gun owners and received dozens of responses.

Perhaps the intent was optimistic, naïve: that personal stories could add something to debates often stripped to black and white.

But are they debates? Or are they fights, revealing a rift in how Americans define what it means to be safe. Can calls for preserving gun rights be balanced with preventing what’s become a nightmarish aspect of American life?

What was clear from the responses: gun owners share passion and commonalities. The majority were men who grew up around guns. White men are the most likely to own guns among the 30 percent of U.S. adults estimated to own guns, said a 2017 Pew Research Center survey that found protection ranked as the top reason for gun ownership.

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More: Armed in America: Why we own guns

Scant data is kept on gun owners, but studies estimate most possess between three and eight guns. Florida does not require permits to buy guns, but does require background checks, which have more than doubled in the past decade to nearly one million in 2017, show Florida Department of Law Enforcement data.

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A license is required to carry a concealed weapon. About 8 percent of Floridians, or 1.8 million residents, now hold licenses. In Lee County, it’s a percent more, in Collier, a percent less. Rates swell further north. Dixie County, billed as the “heart of natural North Florida,” tops the state with 20 percent of 16,700 residents holding a license to carry.

From 2010 to 2017, Florida’s population rose by 12 percent while the number of concealed weapons licenses spiked 140 percent.

More: Concealed weapon permit review finds mistakes in Florida

Another theme revealed among local gun owners: feeling stereotyped. “We are not the frenzied mob, as is oft-portrayed, and I'm sure you'll find we have: different views, experiences, and ‘unscary’ personalities. Actually, some of us are boring,” wrote Jeff Curl, a 48-year-old landscape architect in Naples.

Yes, gun owners revere the Second Amendment, but they do not agree on how that support should look. Roughly half of gun owners support stricter gun laws, per a February Quinnipiac University poll.

Estero resident Bruce Castka, a 71-year-old retired junior high principal, spent 30 years in the U.S. Army reserves and retired as a colonel. He owns several rifles for hunting and target shooting and favors more gun control, including banning AR-15 rifles. He does not believe handguns should be carried by civilians without significant training.

“It is an embarrassment to me that most of the civilized world has reasonable gun control laws but we must remain a nation of cowboys governed by the tyranny of the NRA. It is time for our country to grow up and act like responsible adults and gun owners.”

There were also gun owners with views like 66-year-old George K. Rasley Jr. of Naples, who had a career in government that included an assistant director post with the National Park Service. A hunter and shooter since childhood, Rasley has built two AR-based rifles for target shooting. He is working on another.

“I've seen enough of the world and politics to recognize that all God-given rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution are only as safe as one's willingness to defend them, and that is another reason to be a firearms owner.”

These are the diverse stories and opinions of other gun owners in Southwest Florida.

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Armed in America: Don't leave home without it “If I’m with my loved ones and my friends, it’s (gun) a sense of protecting the people you love,” says Lorna Washington of carrying a gun.

'You’re always thinking about: What if?'

Lorna Washington sometimes carries her 9-millimeter pistol to church.

A defensive stance is not where she wants to be in a house of worship. Yet, the prevalence of mass shootings makes her feel the nation is under siege. “Everywhere I go I’m constantly thinking about it, especially when you carry. You’re always aware of your surroundings. You’re always thinking about: What if?”

It pains the 54-year-old to feel that way, especially in church where she’d rather be assured all will be well, but after killings in South Carolina and Texas churches a shooter entering her church does not feel beyond the realm of possibility.

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Washington, a grandmother and early childhood educator, began carrying a concealed firearm regularly in the past year after taking a one-night course. More of her friends and relatives carry too. About 10 in her circle have recently received their permits, she estimated.

As a single woman returning late from work, she feels safer with a gun in her Lehigh Acres home. She has long been familiar with firearms.

Washington grew up in a military family in the Virgin Islands. Her father, a veteran, taught her how to target shoot around the age of 11. In her 20s, while living in Miami, she began to carry a gun for protection.

At one point, she recalls, a man, a stalker, blocked her driveway and pointed a gun at her. She retrieved her gun, and fired. She missed. He fled. She reported firing her gun to the police. They found him later with a toy gun, she said. They took her gun for a cooling-off period, though she had others at home.

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In her 30s, Washington decided to get rid of her guns. “Having young kids and teenagers, I didn’t want them to have that type of accident.”

The potential for mass shootings drives her fear more than shootings that have claimed too many lives in the Fort Myers neighborhoods surrounding her workplace.

“In the African-American communities, we say black-on-black violence. …but there’s usually some underlying thing. With the white race, you’re talking about mass shootings, another type of gun violence where totally innocent people’s lives are taken.”

She noted the prevalence of white-on-white gun violence, too. “It doesn’t have to do so much with race. It depends on your economic and social status.”

Thoughts on gun reform: Washington is in favor of banning guns like semi-automatic rifles and accessories that have been used by mass shooters. “I want the right to bear arms, but I think there should be restrictions. … All these people worried about restrictions, How can you look families in the face when somebody goes into a school and takes lives?”

Armed in America: Taking responsibility Suzy Valentine and husband David Southall, of Bonita Springs, Fla., believe that gun ownership is a responsibility that should be taken seriously.

'Karate ain’t for us old folks. Forget that.'

A white-haired grandmother packing at Panera may be the one to save your life.

This is how Suzy Valentine thinks. She is in her 70s and almost always carries a .38 revolver in her purse. “I’m pretty sure I could make a difference and I’d be the last one in the crowd they’d suspect would be the one with the gun.”

“She’s actually a pretty good shot,” added her husband David Southall, 73, who has the bona fides to judge. For the past 30 years, he has been an NRA-certified firearms instructor. Since coupling with Southall, Valentine has taken up teaching too.

Who is not a great shot? Many law enforcement officers, said Southall, from his teaching experience. “The average citizen is a better shot.”

This assessment bolsters his fundamental beliefs that he’s responsible for his protection and that gun ownership promotes safety.

“Police are not the first responders, they’re the last responders because it’s already over with by the time they get there. The only thing they’re going to do for you is draw a chalk line around your body,” said Southall. “Why do I carry a gun? Because I’m prepared.”

“I don’t carry a gun because I’m paranoid. I’m not paranoid because I have a gun.”

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Southall and Valentine share experiences of rural childhoods where guns were commonplace, used for hunting, brought to school.

It wasn’t guns, but gardens that brought them together in 2004. As a now-retired museum educator at Collier County Museums, Southall, a biologist by training, led a talk on Florida native plants. Valentine, as a member of the Naples Garden Club, was in the audience. They began chatting after the talk. Soon, they learned of a shared interest in firearms. “It didn’t take long because we both talk a lot,” Valentine recalled.

One of Southall’s early gifts to Valentine was a high-quality horsehide carry purse. They married in 2012 in their Bonita Springs garden. Their mutual interests are myriad: botany, history, travel, working with kids. This particular afternoon, Southall had returned from a library talk he led on mosquito control.

Southall credits personal experiences for leading him to carry a gun at most times. A few moments stand out. In his mid-20s, he was beaten and robbed by three men inside his New York City apartment building. “No person is ever going to lay their hands on me and do that to me again,” he resolved afterward.

This came shortly after his return from Vietnam. As a draftee, he served in the Army from 1966 to 1968. He spent several months as a combat squad leader, living alongside the Vietnamese in a riverside village outside of Saigon. At one point, his unit was called out.

When they returned a month later, “all the people were dead. And they’re dead because we disarmed them,” Southall said. It cemented in him a lesson about self-reliance.

“If you’re relying on other people, government reinforcements, or you’re relying on supplies or reinforcements or replacements, you’re kidding yourself.”

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Valentine spent three decades in Brazil, where her ex-husband ran a business. Through her 20s and 40s, she studied judo and karate. “At one point, my hand was registered as a lethal weapon by the police of Brazil.”

Southall noted the limits of martial arts for them now. “Here’s the thing, karate ain’t for us old folks. Forget that.”

Thoughts on gun reform: “This country has thousands of gun laws on the books that would, if enforced, reduce somewhat the access to firearms by dangerous or bad people,” said Southall. “The utter failure of law enforcement to protect the public, especially in the case of the Parkland (shootings) … but in other incidents as well, is more evidence that we individuals are on our own when it comes to personal protection.”

Valentine agreed. “We just need to enforce the laws and emphasize positive ways of dealing with each other. … It’s more of a social and family problem.”

Armed in America: A shooter's passion "They're (guns) just awesome,” says Sara Harenchar who is a competitive precision rifle shooter and works at The Alamo by Lotus Gunworks in Naples, FL

'It made me feel like a kid again.'

Minutes before the doors opened at The Alamo in North Naples, a clutch of people waited to stream inside. The gleaming well-decorated gun store and range, complete with a gun club concierge, is true to upscale Naples.

The wait, says Sara Harenchar, Alamo’s marketing director, is typical. What seems less typical is two of the 34-year-old’s passions: guns and yoga.

“They can exist concurrently. There’s a lot of I guess, liberal hippies, that are also into yoga so it’s hard to imagine that a really passionate firearms enthusiast being really into yoga, but there’s nothing about yoga that would keep them from liking it.”

Harenchar’s interest in guns is steeped in nostalgia. She used to trail her uncle through the woods as he shot pheasants or ducks. When she was in her mid-20s in New Jersey, a friend invited her to go shooting. The affinity was instant.

“It made me feel like a kid again and it reminded me of my uncle.”

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At 29, she left her job in event planning and as a wine expert at a high-end restaurant group to work at a gun range. “I liked working in the restaurant industry. I liked working in the firearms industry more.”

Now a collector and a competitive precision rifle shooter, she placed 10th out of 50th in one recent local competition that drew only one other female shooter, she said.

Upon moving to Naples nearly three years ago, Harenchar grew the women-with-firearms community with popular women’s meet-ups and seminars. For beginning shooters, Harenchar said it can be helpful to separate women from their partners. “The guy will try to do everything for them. If you get the girl by themselves, it’s, ‘No, you can do this.’”

Thoughts on gun reform: Harenchar declined to comment.

“I am an instructor and not a politician.”

Armed in America: 'Don't take it (gun) away from me.' “Don’t take away my right to bear arms. You can put some reasonable rules on it. I can live with that. But don’t take it away from me,” says Joe Moro.

“I wouldn’t buy a gun today.”

An American flag drapes over Joe Moro’s office closet that hides a locked gun safe containing about 10 pistols, four rifles, three shotguns, and decades of memories. Moro doesn’t shoot anymore but he admires them when he oils them every so often.

“My life has mellowed,” said Moro, 77, grandfather to nine. “I concentrate more on having a good cigar, a good glass of bourbon.”

“I wouldn’t buy a gun today.”

But guns were a part of what it meant to become Joe Moro, the man. Around 12, he and a friend took shooting lessons to earn a Boy Scout badge.

Later, Moro and his friends took up hunting, mostly birds and rabbits in the Massachusetts woods. He begged his father to let him use his paper-route earnings to buy a 12-gauge used shotgun. It took convincing. “I was a young kid and it’s not generally accepted that you give young kids dangerous things.”

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After college, Moro enlisted in the Army and served six years in the reserve. As a young man, he became a bank executive in Boston. One day, masked men barged into Moro’s bank.

Everybody down! Everybody down!

One of them pressed a .45-caliber gun to Moro’s forehead.

When the robbers left, the red mark on his forehead remained.

This prompted Moro to begin carrying. He did so for about 10 years while working around Boston. “It isn’t like I got a thrill out of a carrying a gun,” said Moro, a seasonal south Fort Myers resident. “I think things might have happened to me if I didn’t have the gun.”

Ernest Hemingway influenced his gun collection. He bought an Italian Carcano, also the type of gun that killed President John F. Kennedy, after reading about Carcano rifles in Hemingway’s writing. The author was a role model and inspired Moro’s adventures in Paris and running with the bulls in Pamplona.

“I tried to do as many as those things as I could to kind of walk in his footsteps because I thought he lived a very interesting life. We only go around in this world once.

“Though Hemingway ended up shooting himself. …I wouldn’t do that.”

Thoughts on gun reform: “I am completely in favor of gun licensing and background checks as required in Massachusetts.

“Do people have an unconditional right to bear arms? No, there are controls that come with that and as long as they are reasonable and they do protect the essence of the right to bear arms, I think it’s OK to make certain changes.”

Armed in America: Dehumanization of 'normal guy' "I am a gun owner but I am also a dad, landscape architect, member of society, taxpayer, just a normal guy,” says Jeff Curl, of Naples, Fla.

'Don’t judge somebody else for simply owning a firearm.'

For Jeff Curl, his “ah-ha moment” came in 2015.

Late one evening, his wife at the time was in their Golden Gate Estates home, the kids asleep in their beds. The door opened. She called out. The door closed. She called the police, who searched the woods and found no one. Her next call was to Curl.

“I felt utterly helpless, utterly defenseless,” said Curl, a 48-year-old landscape architect. He signed them up for concealed carry courses and bought a pair of 9-millimeter pistols.

“Philosophically, in my home, I’m responsible for my own protection,” he said, noting the scare raised his awareness about the lag between an incident and the time it takes for law enforcement to arrive. Curl now owns multiple firearms and is teaching his children, 10 and 13, about firearms safety and use. “In our household, currently, it’s simply another sport.”

Curl was not raised around guns. His grandparents served in World War II. One of his grandfathers returned with captured Nazi firearms, which he turned into the New York police, Curl said. He believes his grandparents’ war experiences influenced his parents to keep a no-gun home. “Even now, it's a bit dubious to discuss firearms with my parents; however, when they enter my home, the gun safe/gun cabinet are hard to miss.”

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Gun ownership can feel taboo in professional and social circles, he said.

“I’m about as far as the perceived perception probably of a typical gun owner. …Until an event happens, I hope you don’t judge somebody else for simply owning a firearm.”

Thoughts on gun reform: Curl believes “any simple rule, regulation, prohibition is basically a foothold. That’s the perception.”

“I believe prevention on the ‘front-lines’ vs. an additional layer of government review, is both more targeted and more cost-effective. Why are we reacting to Parkland, instead of the overall state of mental health?”

“I believe all sides want safety, and they’re acting in what they believe is an innocuous way; however, there truly is no magic solution.”