Tag: concealed carry

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Change of heart: ACAC reverses concealed-carry policy

The idea of ACAC members carrying concealed firearms during vigorous exercise unnerved more than 300 people who signed a petition vowing to quit the club if packing heat persisted. Staff photo

One day after C-VILLE Weekly’s December 14 story about ACAC’s quiet change in policy that allowed concealed-carry of guns—and social media blowing up with outraged members threatening to leave the club if guns were allowed on premises—the fitness center changed its policy again.

“Our primary objective is to create a safe and welcoming environment in the clubs, and the safety of our members and team members will always be our priority,” says an unsigned post December 15 on the club’s Facebook page. “We have made the decision to prohibit guns on ACAC property with the exception of law enforcement and ACAC security officers.”

Erik Braun is an ACAC member who started a petition late December 14 and by the next day had nearly 300 signatures of members who vowed to end their memberships if firearms weren’t banned by December 26. “We believe this is a bad policy that only increases the chance that ACAC members, including children, could be harmed or killed,” it said.

Braun’s reaction to finding out guns were allowed at ACAC was one of “dismay and profound concern,” he says. “Concealed-carry is not a way to make a place safer. It produces inadvertent danger and the chances for an accident increase.”

He says his family has always enjoyed ACAC, but knowing guns were allowed “is a deal-breaker for me.”

Even Braun was surprised by the rapidity of the change in policy and that by December 15, ACAC was thanking members for their feedback and stepping back from allowing them to pack heat while exercising.

Braun had called the club December 14, and says the person he talked to was “courteous” and “quite responsive” but “quite clear that was the policy.” He was put in touch with security director Jason Perry and got a voicemail that left “the accurate perception they weren’t going to change their policy,” he says.

He also wonders why members weren’t notified of the change in policy when it happened over the summer. “It was a fait accompli,” he says.

ACAC member Paula Fallon also was surprised at the speed of ACAC’s response once the story came out. She’d first asked the club about the policy change in November, when another member jokingly asked if she had stepped on a bullet during class, and she learned that a member had open-carried a gun to a meditation class and had dropped it.

“The gun falling out in meditation class probably sealed the deal,” she says.

“I heard it was just crazy Wednesday,” she says. “A busy, busy day answering the phone calls from irate people.”

And while she’s glad the club made the change, she challenges ACAC’s statement that it “appreciated the opportunity to engage deeply in conversation with our members and the community.”

Says Fallon, “It’s not a conversation when it was not publicized when it first came out.” She believes the decision was more money driven. “They’re very bottom line,” she says.

ACAC founder Phil Wendel and Perry did not return phone calls from C-VILLE. In an e-mail, Perry directed a reporter to spokesperson Christine Thalwitz, who declined to comment.

In its Facebook post, ACAC says it will send the revised written policy to its members.

“If they’d been forthcoming,” Fallon adds, “it would have felt very different.”

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Concealed-carry rattles some ACAC members

Concealed-carry of guns is now allowed at ACAC, but don’t go open-carrying there. Staff photo

Paula Fallon was barefoot in a class at ACAC in November when she stepped on a small stone. She was taken aback when a classmate asked, “Not a bullet?” That’s how she learned that the downtown fitness facility had changed its policy from prohibiting firearms on premises to allowing concealed-carry.

“It seems like a strange policy change,” she says. “It’s an uncomfortable policy change. And as a parent, I would want to be aware.”

She’s concerned not only that there are children in the facility, but there’s a special needs population—and an area where alcohol is served, she says. With concealed-carry, “that’s a weird combination,” she says.

Jason Perry, ACAC’s security director and a former Navy SEAL and Boston police SWAT member, was hired in January following the mass shootings in San Bernardino. The management “was interested in all the active shooter situations,” he says, and he spent six months evaluating all of ACAC’s 12 clubs.

“We didn’t want guns in people’s faces, but we didn’t want to deny concealed-carry permit holders either,” he says.

Fallon heard a story going around that someone brought a gun into a meditation class.

“It did happen,” confirms Perry. The gun was attached to a fanny pack and when the member stood up, it fell off his pack.

That incident violated ACAC policy on a couple of counts: “Open-carry is not our policy,” says Perry. “Our policy is the weapon has to be on your person. We don’t want to see it.” And that means that a gun should not be left in a locker.

He also points out that people with concealed-carry permits are not allowed to drink alcohol while carrying a firearm, and that they have training in proper use of a gun.

The policy changed this summer, and Fallon says she did get a personal response from the club about her concerns. “Their security person had decided this was the best course,” she says. “That’s a fairly questionable decision.”

ACAC isn’t the only fitness center that allows firearms, however. At Gold’s Gym, says Charlie Mills, “We don’t have any rules against it. Our manager has a concealed-carry permit.”

“We’ve never had to deal with that before,” says CrossFit Charlottesville co-founder Kyle Redinger.

Virginia’s open-carry law has caused consternation in some local businesses, such as Whole Foods, when shoppers spotted a man with a holstered gun in the produce department late last year, according to Slate senior editor and Charlottesville resident Dahlia Lithwick.

Whole Foods’ corporate policy is that no weapons, concealed or openly carried, are allowed on its premises, but local management told shoppers that because Virginia was open-carry, the store couldn’t prohibit packing heat in the produce section, according to Lithwick. A call from corporate headquarters in Austin cleared up that misunderstanding, and by January, a sign at the store’s entrance made clear the store’s gun-free policy.

Back at ACAC, Fallon isn’t the only one who was unaware of the change in procedure. Albemarle Sheriff Chip Harding is a regular, and he says he didn’t know guns could be brought in the club.

“I’ve always locked mine in my car,” he says. “I don’t have any reason to bring it inside” while exercising.

“For me, ACAC has been a sanctuary, a place for exercise and relaxation,” says Fallon. “It was a shock. I think I should have found out about it when the policy changed.”

Perry says members will be notified in literature going out soon, and that few fitness centers spend the money to train staff to deal with active shooter situations—or CPR—as ACAC does, because member safety is its first priority.

“No one believes that a sign that says ‘no firearms’ stops a bad guy with a gun,” he says.

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Jammed session

Delegate Steve Landes is vice chair of the appropriations committee and has made cuts to the governor’s budget—and added funding to local entities like the Frontier Culture Museum and Focused Ultrasound Center. Publicity photo

The General Assembly is in full swing and the No.1 agenda item is to craft a two-year budget. Governor Terry McAuliffe’s budget included Medicaid expansion, which the Republican-controlled legislature has repeatedly said was DOA, so there was that going into the session. Here’s what some of our many local legislators have been up to.

Delegate Steve Landes, R-Weyers Cave and vice chair of the House appropriations committee, proposed some cost-saving cuts to the budget, which include eliminating new funding for substance abuse treatment, for development of biotech spin-off companies and for new hires in the attorney general’s office, where AG Mark Herring made the unpopular-with-Republicans decision to stop concealed-carry permit reciprocity with other states.

Landes submitted budget amendments that increase funding for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Discovery Virginia project, UVA’s Focused Ultrasound Center, the Frontier Culture Museum and for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

In a surprise turn, the highly contentious issue of gun safety reached unusual bipartisanship January 30. McAuliffe announced that Virginia would recognize other states’ concealed-carry permits, reversing Herring’s decision. In exchange, Republicans agreed to support making it illegal for the subject of a protective order to possess a firearm and voluntary background checks at gun shows. State Senator Bryce Reeves, who represents part of Albemarle, carried a bill that reverses Herring’s decision.

Despite a growing majority of Americans who support the legalization of marijuana, the General Assembly remains steadfastly unswayed. Three days after a House subcommittee chaired by Delegate Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, killed nine pot bills that would have allowed expungement of criminal records, reduced simple possession from a misdemeanor to a $100 civil fine and axed the six-month driver’s license forfeiture that comes with a marijuana possession conviction, a Virginia Commonwealth University poll showed that 78 percent of Virginians support a civil fine, and 62 percent favor legalization for recreational use.

In other Bell news, his perennial Tebow bill, which would allow home-schooled students to play in public school sports, passed the House of Delegates for the third year in a row.

And our legislator with the lengthiest rap sheet, Delegate Matt Fariss, R-Rustburg, is carrying a bill that would prohibit the governor’s security detail from carrying firearms. Language in the bill suggests retaliation for the now-abandoned revocation of concealed carry reciprocity. Other Republicans threatened McAuliffe’s security detail when he banned guns from government buildings last year.