It’s Saturday night, and you want to take your wife, girlfriend, family or friends to the movies and you begin to look through the newspapers (or online) for listings in your area. You find a movie that is interesting and that you want to see and the information tells you the time, the location and how much it costs. But you have one other thing that you would like to know that you won’t find in any of the theater listings and that is if it is a “Gun Free Zone” or not and in the wake of the Colorado theater shooting this is something that you feel you should know.

This is where a new smart phone application called the “Gun Free Zone App” comes in handy. You can download the App from ITunes and when you go to a local business you can look to see if it is listed as a place that allows you to carry your weapon with you, or a place that does not.

That is not the only reason John Peden, founder of the GunFreeZone App, decided to develop this application.

“I came up with the app in response to a newspaper in New York posting a map with the home addresses and names of all the registered firearm owners in 2 counties on their website,” he said. “I didn’t like that they were targeting people so I figured that economic warfare is the way to stop gun control. The easiest way to bring economic warfare into play was to let people know where the gun free zones are so they can avoid them and the app was born.”

Since early July the App has more than 36,000 user plateau with over 350,000 locations marked thus far.

“When you open our app, the GPS chip on your smartphone finds where you are, locates itself on a map, and also find the 20 nearest public locations like stores, theaters, parks, and so on. Those are then displayed both on the map as different colored dots and in a list below the map.”

You can input information into the App as a customer or as the owner of a business.

“The user can then select a store from the map which brings up that store’s voting page which asks the user, “Is _______________ a gun free zone?” The user then selects whether the store is a gun free zone or firearm friendly and the mark is immediately shared with everyone else who uses the app. The vote itself is very easy to understand – a gun with a red circle through it means it’s a gun free zone. A gun with a green circle around it means that firearms are allowed.”

When you vote on a store, it’s corresponding dot on the map changes color accordingly. Any dot that is blue means there has not been anyone who has voted on that store yet.

With every kind of technology out there, there is room for some errors or inaccurate information John explains. “Because this is a crowd sourced database, there will always be the opportunity for mischief which we can control a few ways. First, the owner of a store can verify who they are to us directly and then lock the vote on their store as either gun free, firearm friendly, or no vote allowed.”

Response has been pretty positive, with the exception of those who want gun control and those who think that the App will be used by criminals to target gun free zones. One group in the past month in direct response to the GunFreeZone built an app of their own so that people could pin point households who own guns.

“They are terrified of the effectiveness we have in organizing the pro-Second Amendment crowd in supporting pro-Second Amendment stores,” he said. “They know that if we tell 80 million gun owners which stores don’t want them as customers, a lot of gun free stores will go out of business.”

The next question is what if criminals use this App to target businesses that do not allow firearms. “My response is to always ask them if they think we’re sharing some big secret. The criminals already know where the gun free zones are, don’t they?” John continues “It’s posted right on the front door of the mall so all we’re doing is letting the good guys know as much as the bad guys already know. Knowledge is power it has been said. Our goal is to keep you and your family safe – “Don’t go into this theater because you’re at a higher risk of being involved in a mass shooting.”

John states the 4 goals he strives for with this app:

1. Stop shopping in stores that support gun control and get more money spent in firearm friendly stores. Vote with your wallet and remind people that if you don’t want my gun, you don’t get my money.

2. Keep people safe and out of high-crime areas by warning them that criminals may have marked the store they’re in for mass murder.

3. Stop unintentional firearm crime. In some states, a gun free zone sign has the effect of law. If people carry concealed past that sign, it’s usually a felony. Also, if someone has a 20 round magazine in their car in Pennsylvania and crosses the border into New York, that’s a felony. We want to warn them when they’re about to do things like that. Another scenario would be concealed carry permit reciprocity – the phone can know where you are and what states honor your CCW and warn you or help plan your trip so you can stay legal.

4. Stop gun control permanently. This is a future feature but we will be able to layer other data on top of the gun free zone map and educate people on the real life impact of gun control. How does a gun free zone (and gun control by proxy) impact things like crime, graffiti, store closings, rental occupancy rates, property values, divorce rates, inflation, SAT scores, and I have no idea what else. We can put any data we want on our map and find correlations. Then, we can teach people in a personalized way what happens when they see strict gun laws. No bias, no hidden agenda – just what these laws mean for you personally. It’s a very, very effective way to teach people about the law of unintended consequences.

The app is free and can be downloaded at iTunes, the Google Play store, or at our website directly at http://www.GunFreeZoneApp.com.

For more information or if you have questions about the app contact John Peden through email at john@GunFreeZoneApp.com or Twitter handle @PedenJohn. The company website is http://www.GunFreeZoneApp.com, Twitter handle is @GunFreeZoneApp and Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/GunFreeZoneApp