LAUGESEN: A new voice for freedom in town

Call me Monday night and we'll chat on talk radio. Call 1-800-531-3815 between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m., even if it's to hand me my head for something I wrote. Call to talk about anything - gun rights, taxes, the new federalism, or state and local politics. All is fair game.

Let's try to solve the world's problems with my longtime friend, Bob Glass, who has returned to Colorado to advocate freedom after years of self-imposed exile in northern Idaho.

Bob is a new voice of freedom in Colorado Springs, hosting a talk show every weeknight from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. on 1580 AM. To listen on a computer go to RadioTime at: radiotime.com/station/s_26409/KKKK_1580.aspx

Bob began his show last week, and he's doing OK. Few people are listening because few know the show exists. Bob's a bit rusty, giving these first shows a refreshingly genuine broadcast-from-a-basement "Wayne's World" kind of feel. But he's a solid thinker with passion and heart, and he's destined for greatness.

Bob is among a few influences I credit most with inspiring me to use my writing as nothing less than a means to defend constitutional principles of limited government and self-restrained freedom for individuals.

When I met Bob, back in the mid-'90s, he was running a high-end gun store in Boulder's old Soldier of Fortune publishing building.

Bob was like no other gun-store owner I had met. His store was like a fashionable boutique, with alternative rock playing in the background. Though he sold an impressive collection of weapons, the store seemed more like a place of freedom than of hunting rifles and duck decoys.

As I came to know Bob, it became apparent he was a freedom fighter first and gun dealer second. He viewed guns as simple tools of freedom from tyranny and crime. We laughed about the college professors and other liberal intellectuals who advocated gun control but spent thousands at Bob's store buying weapons to protect their own homes. I'll never forget the day two skinheads showed up with swastikas on their T-shirts and Bob quite literally threw them out.

Bob doesn't love guns. Bob loves freedom, and everything he does is an effort to guard freedom from government intrusion.

Bob grew up in New York City, the son of a World War II veteran who flew 36 B-24 missions over Germany and occupied Europe.

His worldview was heavily influenced by his grandmother, Rose, an immigrant from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

Rose came to America alone at age 13. Her family had enough money to buy only one passage for the trans-Atlantic trip. She brought with her a photo album that contained the pictures of relatives.

After the end of World War II, Americans learned the totality of Hitler's horror. Nazis had used concentration camps in an effort to murder every Jewish man, woman and child in Europe and they were largely successful. All of Bob's aunts, uncles and cousins, the relatives pictured in Grandma's photo album, were dead. Bob was never the same when he learned of it all.

"She went through the album with me telling me everyone's name and even a story or two about each one," Bob said. "Most of the faces in the album were those of children - innocent children - my relatives that I would never know. I was overcome by sadness and rage. The Holocaust became personal in a way that words cannot fully describe."

From that day on, Bob began seeking answers: Why did it happen? How could it have happened? Will it happen again?

In his seeking, Bob studied other governments that have massacred innocents on a massive scale. He discovered a theme.

"Nations that deny fundamental rights to their citizens are all bloodbaths waiting to happen," Bob says. "Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao Tse Tung in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia - the list goes on. So it baffles me how free men and women voluntarily surrender their freedoms for the illusion of security and political correctness, willingly giving up their wealth and their gun rights to a faceless bureaucracy that has anything but their interests at heart."

Bob left Colorado to find his own version of freedom in 2001, after the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms worked every angle imaginable to create trouble for him, for customers of his store, and for sponsors of his radio show.

Bob has no more interest in selling guns, but he will never back off his relentless defense of self-restrained freedom for individuals on American soil.

We are fortunate to have him broadcasting nightly right here in Colorado Springs, and I am honored to be his guest tonight. Please tune in, phone in, and chat. Together, let's advocate freedom.

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Laugesen is editorial page editor of The Gazette. Call the show Monday night between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. at 1-800-531-3815. Listen at 1580 AM, or at the Web site radiotime.com/station/s_26409/KKKK_1580.aspx