Moving to Boulder CO

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Hi Folks,
looks like by the end of the first quarter of 07 I will be a Colorado resident. The job I am looking at is in Boulder. I could use some help figuring out the local area as far as shooting sports, Countie attitudes on black rifles and such. Under serious considerations are the Lyons area, Boulder (if we can afford), the Lousiville area or something south of it. I heard that Denver and an adjacent county are have black rifle ordinances, and that will not do. (Since I am moving from Kaliforniastan, I want more freedoms, damit :cuss: )
I would love a gun range or club nearby, or an open area where I can go shoot. I will more then likely apply for a CHL so I can bloster the ranks. Other things are going to play into our decision too: Shools (1st one about to go to 1st grade!) home prices and the lot size associated with the house. We will probably end up in a neighborhood so kids can have friends, but if it were up to me I would like to live in the mountains.
Appreciate any and all advice, both for firearms and other issues as listed.
Thank you very much.
686+
 
Boulder

I live in denver and yes they do have an "Assault Weapons" ban. Do yourself a favor and don't move to denver.
As for bolder I don't know if they have a ban or not.
Boulder is a collage town with a very VERY liberal outlook.
I would say out of boulder too. Find a nice place north or west of boulder city and county.
Boulder is right at the foothills to the mountains so recreation isn't far away.
There are some heavily trafficked areas that people do shoot but you don't want to be there when they are. A place called left hand canyon is very popular...But people shoot across the road! I went there jeeping and I was a little nervous going through there.
Other then denver and boulder Colorado is a decent place.
P.S. I HATE DENVER! They think they are the own little Fiefdom.
 
Take a look at Longmont ,its only 14 miles north east on Colo 119. My son lives there ,homes cost a bit less , Nice town.
 
From the perspective of state law:
* shall-issue CCW
* affirmation open carry in the absence of local law (SB24/25 passed in the last 2 years)
* no registration
* no state gun bans
* NFA is OK
* we do have background checks for all gun-show sales (we lost this one a few years ago)

Denver is uppity and wants to ban stuff within its limits.

We have a very active USPSA/IPSC, IDPA, 3-Gun, and rifle community, with on average probably 10 matches per month within 90 minutes of Denver.

The Boulder Rifle Club has a super-long waiting list. Weld County (E. of Fort Collins) is relatively easy to get in to.

There is also a lot of public land you can shoot on if you are safe and follow the rules.
 
How pathetic...sounds like Colorado is the Heartland's answer to the East Coast's Massachusetts!
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Only parts of its, mostly Denver and Boulder, and even The People's Republic of Boulder is better than Denver with respect to firearm laws. Plus Boulder has better scenery. Oh, and the Flatirons are pretty as well. :evil:

Boulder ain't gonna be cheap to buy into. When I was looking back in '95, a 60s era ranch like my parents purchased in '78 for $39.5k in Brighton (15 miles east of Boulder) was running in excess of $250k in Martian Acres (lots of college student rentals). Lyons might be better price wise, as well as Louisville. Also look at Erie, Lafayette and Niwat for homes, all are about 20-30 min from Boulder over two lane roads. Firestone and Fredrick are further out on the plains, but still nice. If you're not dead set on a single family house, I know a sweet 2 bedroom Condo thats available for under $200k. Valted ceilings, ceiling fans, eastern and southern light, good HOA. Just gotta watch the neighbor, he can be a bit of a curmudgeon at times. :evil: PM me for the link to the listing.

For shooting, the National Forest is just a short drive up the canyons.
 
The unfair thing is that the City Of Boulder is a hugely unofficial voice for the County of Boulder. The tree huggin hippies of a relatively small college town get all the press for a county that is largely high tech industrial. That small group of commies aside, Boulder county is fairly middle of the road on most issues. Wages in Boulder compete with Denver fairly positively however home prices get lower as you work your way north on the Front Range. Given the <30 minute commute from smaller towns like Berthoud, and Loveland lower priced homes north of Boulder become attractive. As an added plus, your kid won't be taught by wealthy elitist hippies who pretend that only Liberal doctrine is appropriate for the classroom. As a Coloradoan for the last six years I can say that the front range seems to be very polarized on politics and religion. At CSU (Fort Collins) it's very rare not to have someone literally shouting old testament to you on your way to class. In the city of Boulder it's not unommon to hear someone shouting about how evil a Nativity scene is. So far, gun rights seem pretty good and most non-gun folk aren't anti gun folk.
 
Denver and Boulder are the only signifigantly liberal areas... and they're only liberal compared to the rest of Colorado. Denver is more "big city" liberal in that much of what they do is aimed at crime reduction and that sort of thing. Boulder is more tree-hugger liberal with environmentalism and animal rights issues at the forefront. Boulder is expensive as hell for buying houses... they have a new build ban: pretty much in order to build something you have to tear something down.

Lots of nice little towns within commute range: Louisville, Lafyette, Erie, Gunbarrel, Niwot, Broomfield. I live in Longmont myself.

You'll hear locals compain about traffic, and I guess for what they're used to it's bad... but if you've ever been on the 5 or 405 during rush hour you'll laugh at them.

High today is supposed to hit 36 & it's a BEAUTIFUL sunny day, high a few days ago was 11 w/ 6" of snow... high by this weekend is supposed to be in the 50's. The saying "if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes" really applies here, esp in the mountains and down in Colorado Springs. Seeing a Coloradan wearing flip flops, shorts and a parka walking thru ankle-deep snow isn't that unusual.

There are several shooting groups, everything from ICORE to IPSC to rifle stuff.

The two I've shot with are:

http://www.ncrgc.org/ They run their own format semi-IDPA Defensive Pistol once per month. Great folks and nice range.

http://www.coloradoshooting.org/fridpa.htm Also great folks who use a true IDPA format. Bit farther away so I've only shot with them a few times.
 
How pathetic...sounds like Colorado is the Heartland's answer to the East Coast's Massachusetts!
Click to expand...

Just Denver and Boulder. Outside of that, I would have an extremely difficult time naming a state that has a more active and diverse shooting community.

In addition to the stuff that Zak listed, Colorado has active groups shooting High Power, Bullseye, and an entire gamut of International shooting sports, and Colorado Springs has a very active junior development program at the National Training Center.

Colorado is the only state where I've gone out on a Saturday to shoot an ISSF-sanctioned 10 meter air pistol match, follow it up with some ISSF Centerfire, and then get up on Sunday and roll out to an IPSC match.
 
How pathetic...sounds like Colorado is the Heartland's answer to the East Coast's Massachusetts!
Click to expand...
As has been stated before, just Denver and Boulder (and mostly Denver from a legal standpoint ... Boulder doesn't have as many bad laws as Denver, but the people there are, well, Boulderites).

And a Texan has NO PLACE complaining about Colorado Gun Laws ... at least I can CCW into a bar here and there are no "30.06" signs. :scrutiny:

Compared to Colorado, Texas is closer to Massachusetts in terms of heavy handed government regulation of us gunnies.

But we're talking to someone moving from Los Freakin' Angeles ... even Denver is a Libertarian stronghold compared to LA.



Anyway, aside from politics, Boulder itself is EXPENSIVE. So you won't likely be living IN the city of Boulder unless you want to continue spending as much as it costs to live in LA (Boulder and San Francisco keep swapping the title of "most expensive city in America to live in").
 
Boulder is a very beautiful town, but very left wing and expensive. The Pearl Street Mall in Boulder has the Left Hand Book Store which has more books on Marx than you could imagine. An elderly woman living in Boulder was recently arrested and taken to jail for replacing the rotten door on her garage without the proper city approvals. Don't live in Boulder unless you like lots of rules to follow. I live just outside Boulder county and pay about half the property taxes that I would pay if my house was moved a few hundred yards into Boulder county. Lyons is nice, as are Golden and Arvada which are not too far from Boulder.
 
Sounds like CO is going to the liberals. The state is becoming more Democrat every year. I bet in a few elections it will be a pretty solid Democrat state, because of the growing cities of Boulder, Denver and their Burbs. Oh well.
 
Welcome to the state..

Personnally, I would not move into Boulder or Denver proper, not cheap and to left for me.. But as mentioned there are alot of nice places near Boulder which will offer you a much better life style that California. Gun laws not to bad here but we have a Democrat state senate/congress and a Democrat governor to be (who is not gun friendly). We'll see, but welcome.


C
 
Gotta stay out of longmont, gotta be careful of your neighbors
<<<<<<<

Anyway, it is significantly cheaper to live in Weld County (just east of Boulder), thru Property taxes, car registration, stupid building inspectors, etc

Boulder is hypocritical as all get out.
that's ti's biggest problem
People driving 12mpg Range Rovers preaching about the environment.
i don't care about the Range Rover, but don't go preaching.

City of Boulder is VERY compact, very little space. County of Boulder is real spread out. lots and lots of laws and busybodies.

Living in the county and not the city (in anyplace in Colo.) can save you significant amounts of money in sales tax.
 
I live outside the limits of Longmont, and heartily suggest doing something along those lines, but perhaps on the west side. You should be close to the nice new schools they built there. (I'm assuming that you're taking work in the city of Boulder itself, and want to keep the commute <=30 minutes.)
The unfair thing is that the City Of Boulder is a hugely unofficial voice for the County of Boulder.
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The problem, as near as I can tell, is that the three county commissioners have to live within their corresponding districts (only one of which contains the whacky city of Boulder), but everybody in the county gets to vote on each commissioner. Sooo, basically the city residents get to pick.
Lyons might be better price wise, as well as Louisville. Also look at Erie, Lafayette and Niwat for homes, all are about 20-30 min from Boulder over two lane roads.
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Lyons will be a bit rougher a commute. You've only got one choice of route (US36) and I'm under the impression it gets kind of nasty in bad weather. Niwot is pretty expensive. (As near as I can figure, it is for people who can't afford a giant house in Boulder, but don't want the stigma of living in Longmont.) Erie is kind of far. Lafayette, Louisville, Superior, and Longmont are the most popular choices. I suggest Longmont, as you're then that much further away from Denver and the surrounding high population density areas.
 
Regardless of how the rest of the state of CO is, it's pretty unfortunate that one can't choose Boulder or Denver to live in. After all, some people DO like to live in big cities.

Maybe it has something to do with Denver being "diverse," i.e., a safe-haven city for Mexican immigrants, like here in El Paso...those people are overwhelmingly Democrats and vote liberal.

That bodes ill for the entire country as it becomes further Balkanized.

Say whatever you want about TX...no offense taken, partly because I'm not a Texan. I'm not even what passes for an "American" nowadays, either, but that's a whole 'nother topic.

-- John D.
 
You will feel right at home comming from Kalifonia. I live on the western slope and its like day and night. Maybe not so much big money but great quality of life.Just kidding the west slope sucks and someone told me its closed.
 
I lived in Boulder for a year. I got tired of the "liberals" and was going to move, I ended up escaping to Nederland for 4 more years (before moving back to PA) and was very happy living up there and working in Boulder.

If you are a young partying college student or a "liberal nanny-state tree hugger". Boulder is a great place to live. Otherwise it's a great place to visit and even work, much better places to actually live with short distance of Boulder.

Up near Nederland we never even bothered with ranges, one of my friends was a caretaker for an old mine, we would sometimes shoot there. Also the are northwest of Boulder is surrounded by National Forest where you can just go shoot.
 
Boulder rifle club is a very nice club. The wait for most folks will take over 10 years to get into it as a member.
but that does not stop you from going to any events like shoots they run.
The Boulder rifle club has produced many, many National champions in high power from their junior program. also the juniors their still hold a few national records. They run pistol matches, monthly highpower matches, Clinics and indoor winter small bore leagues. They also have junior practice nights once the weather turns better in the spring and many times it is taught by a wide range of coaches. all of them have fast experience in the sport of highpower. Sometimes you will get national champions, Olympic shooters, World record holders and many others who come to coach.

I have many friends who live their and man it is a expensive area. It always makes me feel I need to really watch what I do in that town when I have a truck full of shooting equipment. I just keep it out of site when I stop to eat at a place in that town.
I moved here from Ca in 98 and it was a shock to be able to walk in and just buy a rifle
 
Something that most Coloradoans won't admit is that Colorado wages suck as compared to California or Michigan. The buying power here isn't all that strong either. Most folks will carry on about how wonderfully beautiful the mountains are but VERY few do anything with them aside from skiing. There are tons of old communities that are in varying degrees of modernization and lots of new communities with 20 minute drives to the nearest gas station. Finding a job is more difficult here than anywhere I've ever lived. The weather is more constant here than CA or MI despite the "wait 5 minutes" comments. In point of fact, it doesn't rain very often at all and when it does it's short lived. CA in winter was more like 6-7 rain storms each lasting 45min - 1 hour. Michigan is 2 weeks of sunshine spread out on Wednessdays with no more than three nice days between clouds, rain or snow. I lived there for nearly 20 years I know, Michiganders lie about it all the time! Most Coloradoans complain about 10 minute drives whereas I've commuted 45 minutes minimum to most jobs I've held elsewhere. Traffic here isn't much to worry about if you've ever experienced CA rush hour.
 
Unless you make $100K a year or want to live in a 1 bedroom apt, forget Boulder, the property values are SO out of whack with reality that it's not even worth looking.

As someone mentioned, Boulder does have a range but it is private and the waiting list is YEARS.

Colorado is NOT a bad place to be. But you've got to move 90 miles north Denver/Boulder to be in an affordable spot that will support your hobbies.

I live in Loveland - great access to the mountains, the plains, Wyoming, hunting, the metro area, etc. We've got a big mall, all of the x-mart stores your wife can shake a stick at, minor league hockey, good fishing, etc. The average home for a family of 3 or 4 here will set you back $190k. Compare that to $400k in Boulder.

Greeley, if you can find the right area (there's some bad areas), may be your most affordable option AND it is even closer to shooting areas and hunting in the plains. The same $190K home in Loveland may be $175K in Greeley.

North of Denver there is a disturbing lack of shooting ranges though. I have to drive 60 miles to shoot (either in the National Grasslands or at Pawnee Sportsmans Center) but either way it costs in gas or shooting fees. I really wish there was a public place 20 minutes from my house where I could shoot any time I wanted - I'd probably start reloading if that was the case.

What industry do you work in?
 
All,
thank you for all the replies so far. Our preference so far is to live in some sort of suburb of the Boulder area, or one of the adjacent towns. After living on the Westside of LA suburbia is looking good to me. The goal will be to pick up a house that will sustain the 5 of us and have room for the Grandparents who may need our care really soon. As my job falls into the "hitech" realm of packaging engineer, (think products not styrofoam), the Boulder area is a good place to aim for. I am purposefully staying out of Denver proper, due to the AW law and just plain having enough of the big city ratrace, er, life.
We will take a trip soon, maybee during the holidays, and check out some of the area. I hope the weather cooperates so we can get a good feel for it all.
I think we will target the area between Longmont and Louisville.
 
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