CCW Permit Holder Awarded $25,000 by Town After Cops Arrested Him for Carrying Gun in CO Theater

A man who was open carrying his firearm, as he had always done, was arrested in 2012, just days after the Aurora, CO movie theater shooting.  But now he has been given $25,000 from Thornton, Colorado after reaching a settlement.

Jim Mapes is a CCW permit holder.  He had his gun seized by police and he was taken into custody after open carrying his firearm in a theater which allowed gun owners to do so.

He was then charged with possession of a dangerous weapon in a liquor or beer establishment in addition to brandishing his firearm.

According to Guns.com,

“I was a threat to no one, I didn’t threaten anybody,” Mapes, who maintained the gun was holstered while he was in the theater said at the time.

The incident occurred some 20 miles from and just days after the shooting in Aurora, in which a suspected gunman, identified as 24-year-old James Holmes, killed 12 people and wounded 59 during a showing of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

While Thornton city ordinances state that they prohibit the carry of weapons only in designated municipal buildings, it also has exceptions for the carry of firearms for permit holders.

This was not the first time Mapes carried a gun into a theater in CO.    He has had his CCW permit since 2003 and had come to the theater armed on many occasions with no issues.

After the criminal charges were dropped, Mapes went after the city in a civil rights lawsuit.  And now he is the beneficiary of a settlement with the city.

As many of you know, the theater in the Aurora, CO shooting was in a “gun free zone”, so there were not law abiding citizens with guns to stop the crazed gunman.  Mapes has stated that if he or any other CCW permit holder were in the theater at the time with a gun they could have stopped the massacre from happening.  There is a reason the gunman chose a theater that banned guns from the premises.

Mapes, for his part in the Colorado lawsuit, firmly believes that he was within his rights to be armed.

“No threats, no shots, no violence. Just a man doing what protected under the Colorado constitution,” he told Fox 31 Denver after the news of his settlement was released.

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