DENVER– The Denver Museum of Nature & Science has changed its policy barring visitors from carrying concealed firearms in a move executive staff says is about being compliant with Colorado law.
Ed Scholz, vice president of finance and operations, says the museum removed signs barring the practice in mid-November. He said those notices were posted in 2014.
“We need to be in compliance with the law, so we decided to take the signs down,” Scholz said Wednesday. “It wasn’t about making us more or less safe, it’s about the law.”
Scholz said the decision also aligned the museum with its peers at the Denver Art Museum and Denver Zoo, which allow concealed carry.
“You can post a sign on the door, but it’s almost impossible to enforce,” he explained. “They are concealed weapons for a reason, so it is hard to be enforced.”
The Denver Business Journal first reported the change Tuesday.
Safe Campus Colorado, which advocates to block firearm carrying at the state’s colleges and universities, strongly condemned the move.
“More guns carried by more people in more places is exactly what the gun lobby has promoted,” Ken Toltz, the group’s founder and co-chairman said in a note to museum leadership. “I can’t begin to imagine what all the parents of all the thousands of children who visit the museum are going to think when they learn of this misguided, wacky change in policy.”
