The following information was kindly provided by Mesa County Sheriff Stan Hilkey (5/18/2009).
This is the link to the information on the Mesa County Sheriff's website:
Here at the Sheriff's Office, we keep information material at the front counter of all the local trainers that we consider legitimate.
Recently we are starting to see some possible fraud in CCW training, and are in the process of developing a way to confirm that training delivered is acceptable. If you are applying for a permit in Mesa County, and are considering obtaining training from someone not familiar to the Sheriff's Office, BEWARE ... we may not accept the training as legitimate until we confirm that the training is up to minimum acceptable standards.
Any legitimate training should include Firearms Safety/Weapons handling, actual or simulated (use of "simunition" type ammunition) range exercise and orientation to Colorado Use of Force laws.
The best list of applicable laws can be found at this Colorado Bureau of Investigation website. It has the laws re: CCW, Use of Force, etc.:
There are only two databases in which a Mesa County CCW permit holder's name appears.
The first is the Sheriff's Office internal database; and that name information will not be released publicly. This is simply our own database to keep track of permitees, renewal times, etc.
The second is the Colorado Bureau of Investigations Concealed Weapons database. This database is of CCW permit holders only; it does not contain any other names, especially people with warrants. This allows officers to become aware that someone they are in contact with, or might come into contact with, has a permit. Many think this is information necessary for an officer's safety. Most officers think that also. For this Sheriff, and this Office, the reason this database is important is when a CCW permit holder violates the law with a weapon or behaves irresponsibly in a manner likely to threaten this State's CCW laws. Most often, when that does happen, the only way that we get notified to review the permitee's status is because an officer learned of the CCW permit through access of this database. The entry of names into that database is optional; and some agencies choose not to use it. We do enter the names for the reason stated above.
It's my belief that our Second Amendment rights have to be protected; and one aspect of protecting them is to be responsible with policing ourselves against those few who have permits and abuse the permit process to break the law and behave in a way that gives those people in our country the justification they need to take those rights away. Legislative bodies, both at the State and Federal level, are very reactive to emotion and subject to change laws based on the anecdotal accounts of a few bad instances rather than the majority of good behavior. It serves our belief in the Second Amendment to limit those few stories of abuse and law breaking. I've never seen or heard of abuse of this database.
CCW FAQ on the Mesa County Sheriff's website:
Colorado Bureau of Investigation's home page on CCW's:
Colorado Bureau of Investigation's Reciprocity webpage (useful to know what other states honor Colorado's permit):