The Capitalist Marksman: Meet Anthony Colandro, the NRA’s 76th Director

By Cody McLaughlin

“I’m a capitalist marksman,” said Anthony Colandro, the 58-year-old owner of Gun For Hire at the Woodland Park Gun Range in Passaic County, New Jersey.

But according to Mr. Colandro, his upbringing wasn’t exactly the traditional one that folks think of when they imagine the early years of a “gun nut.”

The Beginning

Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1961, Colandro came from humble beginnings; his father a truck driver and his mother a seamstress. He grew up without any hunters or “traditional” shooting sports enthusiasts in the family. He described his early thoughts on gun ownership as thinking “only bad guys, cops and the military had guns.”

“Then around 1984 one of my friends became a Belleville cop and took me to the range,” Colandro recounted. “I caught the bug.”

From there, a budding enthusiast in his 20’s began fastidious research into the shooting sports.

“Actually, I was pretty good, and being sort of ‘OCD,’ I had to subscribe to gun magazines, you name it. I was reading everything I could find,” Colandro said. “I was influenced heavily by guys like Neal Knox, Colonel Cooper, Elmer Keith Books and Bill Jordan Books.”

From there, he took his passion to the next level, researching first how …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms