Democrat Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday signed into law one of the most sweeping arguably unconstitutional gun bans in the nation’s history.
The measure bans the sale of the most popular selling rifle in America—the Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR)—unless Coloradans obtain from their county sheriff approval, based on subjective criteria, a permit-to-purchase semi-automatic firearms capable of accepting detachable magazines.
Under the law, the sale of semi-automatic firearms capable of accepting a detachable magazine will be banned unless those purchasing the firearms are vetted by a local sheriff and complete a firearm certification course. Sheriff approval to apply for a permit-to-purchase is based on subjective criteria, which was expressly rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2022 Bruen decision.
County sheriffs can deny an application if they have a “reasonable belief that documented previous behavior by the application makes it likely the applicant will present a danger to themself or others.”
Of course, pro-gun groups, including the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), were quick to speak out against Gov. Polis’ signing of the measure.
“This law is unconstitutional on its face. It is a gun control group spurred attack on the Second Amendment rights of those who follow the law,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF’s senior vice president and general counsel. “Colorado lawmakers who claim Gov. Polis’ gun ban will make their state safer have yet to offer legislation that would hold criminals accountable for the criminal misuse of firearms. Instead, they violate the rights of those who obey the law.”
The powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), which worked diligently to try to kill the measure, was also outspoken about the bill being signed into law, which was done at an invitation-only signing ceremony with gun-ban group representatives present.
“Behind closed doors, Governor Polis cowardly signed into law the most anti-gun, anti-freedom bill in Colorado’s history,” the NRA said in a released statement. “Instead of respecting the individual liberties of gun owners and hunters in his state, he bent the knee to the radical gun control element of his party. In Jared’s Colorado, you need a Polis permission slip to exercise your constitutional rights. If this proposal was popular with his citizens, it would not need to be enacted in secret.”
On the other hand, gun-ban organizations, including Everytown for Gun Safety, were ecstatic with Colorado’s governor signing the measure.
“Colorado’s new law is the definition of common sense: If you want to buy a military-style rifle that can kill dozens without needing to reload, you need to get a permit that requires passing a background check and taking a safety course,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “This innovative approach to keeping weapons of war out of dangerous hands establishes a model for other states, and we applaud Governor Polis and the legislature for coming together to address the threat of mass shootings, which Coloradans know all too well.”
Holy crap, in the 10 plus years I’ve been commenting on TTAG, the ‘save my name and e-mail’ function actually freaking works, now!
What was the secret?
We recently upgraded the backend of the website for better performance, speed, and bug fixes.
Hear ye! Hear ye! By order of king polis and State Legislators commoners attempting to exercise their Second Amendment Right in CO will face the BLATANT DISCRIMINATION inherent with Gun Control. That’s a fact and that is all.
But posts which used to appear immediately can take an hour or more to appear. Is the checking of posts done by an intern on their lunch break or between other duties?
Save always worked for me, but now I can’t eddit edit.
Sue the governor, the bill’s author and co-sponors personally, for all court costs, during the lawsuit to overturn it on constitutional grounds.
If only…
Unless these idiots can be personally held accountable, this nonsense will continue.
More laws that will largely be ignored outside of court challenges I guess. Up end another facet of permit to purchase to challenge and hopefully remove from the toolbox for the next generation.
The sheriff’s should just have a stack of pre-signed forms.
Walk in, pick’em up, fill in
Your Name ______________
and head on down to the gun buying place.
Almost how my county works re semi auto rifle endorsements for existing pistol permits (concealed and general ownership). Still sucks but getting funding and standing to challenge it seems to suck more.
This, effectively, can’t be done under this law.
This law requires the Sheriff to take and record biometric data from the applicant. Without that data entry the state won’t allow the issuance of the final “permit to purchase”.
Already give fingerprints to get a permit to purchase to begin with in NY so welcome to our bullshit. With that said if stripped lowers are good to go without a permit (are here so long as whatever you build isn’t a pistol or semiautomatic rifle) there are various options but yes FFLs have been the target since before the SAFE act here, particularly the ones that don’t handle police sales on meaningful numbers.
Stripped lowers will not be good to go when this goes into effect as that would be considered “manufacturing” of a new rifle.
See my comments below, if you didn’t see them 12 hours ago as you read this.
Just caught up a bit after posting that…….well guess you will see what constitutes manufacturing vs assembly. Wild your state found a way to out commie NY but if the IL case goes well it may make things interesting my way as well (eventually).
It’s not really “Colorado” that figured it out.
This bill was designed by Bloomberg’s lawyers in conjunction with the Gifford’s people to try to find a backdoor way to an AWB.
Versions of it are currently pending/being given to certain people in various states. NM, AZ, WA, NV are the one’s I’ve heard of so far with other antis looking to see the various final forms and then try it out in their state too.
Bloomy’s people also are attempting modifications that would achieve the same ends but which they think could be snuck past the people in other Red states with low population but recent Cali influx, ID and WY so far as I’m aware. I’d advise people in those states to keep a sharp eye out for anything remotely resembling this sort of thing.
Ah so they bypassed the commie inclined representatives having to think at all entirely. Figured that would happen eventually but was hoping stupid pride would give us more time before they got organized/moving with their funding from USAID cut. Ah well was bound to happen now that they don’t get taxpayer subsidies as much now. Courts and getting more receptive organizations fired up continues with more to do.
I wanna puke after reading this article.
This innovative approach to keeping weapons of war out of dangerous hands establishes a model for other states, and we applaud Governor Polis and the legislature for coming together to address the threat of mass shootings, which Coloradans know. What a bunch of crap. Time to reconsider my fall hunting trip. No sense spending money here.
The thing about it is Bersa Bob is that the Second Amendment is all about We The People having weapons of war.
That assualt weapon crap and the NRA’s conditional surrender still has us splitting hairs over what is and what ain’t. It shouldn’t have never ever been a negotiable debate to begin with.
Chuck Heston holding a flintlock ” Not one step more.” When he should have been sitting behind an M2 ” Come get some.”
Bersa Bob may be a troll, AI etc
Pass the cursor over his name and the finger appears for clicking.
Yes, Colorado has an unfortunate history with mass shootings. With guns that were legally acquired. So what is gained is nothing.
Colorado has a large number of statistically oddities revolving around the CNS and peripheral nervous system which are not adequately explained.
The most commonly cited being the anomalous amount of MS which can only be partly accounted for by the cluster of treatment facilities for this ailment, which actually followed the incidence, not the other way around.
Even accounting for latitude, altitude and number of care facilities doesn’t explain it.
With regard to shootings, this is in no way helped by the way that Colorado law *interfaces* with Federal law. The combination of which is, 100%, what allowed James Holmes do his thing when every “red flag” in the book was raised in advance.
Add to that the fact that Colorado is extremely friendly to, frankly, mental cases due to their laws on how the homeless must be treated and you have a mess.
Don’t worry! Most gun owners are republicans and republicans are “Back the Blue” cult members that support the very police who enforce the gun control over their 2A rights. Then they complain when rights are lost. What a good day to be an Independent!
As apposed to being a Democrat and voting against oneself at every opportunity?
You stereotype republicans as cultists and dump on LEO’s as
the cult. I’m pretty sure sheriffs at least would be opposed to these new laws. You sound like a very left leaning independent, which after our most recent elections, is nothing more than just another grouchy democrat.
Good luck with compliance.
Wonder how the cover stripped lowers and “bolt action” ARs……… Yeah compliance will likely be low single digits.
Stripped lowers will be legal, provided they’re properly serialized and whatnot, but making a new AR from a stripped lower after the law goes into effect won’t be.
This raises questions about how they’ll treat swapping uppers if they feel they can prove you did it.
They dont care if there is compliance. Compliance is not required, only obedience is required. More criminals is fine with them.
It is the communist who is always demanding obedience.
The problem is that individual compliance won’t matter that much.
This targets FFLs with state license revocation because Colorado added a “CFL” requirement a few years back.
Most of what they’re doing in Colorado actually targets FFLs. The fact that the GOP and “gun rights” people within Colorado can’t see this is mindblowing to me.
Which is also why the best chance for undoing this is the Illinois FOID card court case.
Wow, I haven’t seen “powerful” and “National Rifle Association” used together in a sentence in years. Well, maybe in gun-ban fundraising drivel, but did I miss something?
You’re not wrong. And the NRA hasn’t been “powerful” since I was a cub scout. That may have been in one of the Nixon administrations.
“Gov signs sweeping ban into law.”
What’s that guy got against brooms? He must live in a vacuum.
If that joke sucked any worse you would need to hide it under the rug.
Good luck getting mass compliance in Colorado. In the prairie state it’s approx. 1%. Hey we’re about to have a 250 year anniversary this month! The blood of tyrants & all that jazz🙄
The thing about it is Bersa Bob is that the Second Amendment is all about We The People having weapons of war.
That assualt weapon crap and the NRA’s conditional surrender still has us splitting hairs over what is and what ain’t. It shouldn’t have never ever been a negotiable debate to begin with.
Chuck Heston holding a flintlock ” Not one step more.” When he should have been sitting behind an M2 ” Come get some.”
Bersa Bob may be a troll. His name is in red ink and pass the cursor over and the finger appears for a click to who knows where!
Semi-auto rifles sales will be to the moon for the next year and a quarter or so in CO.
You can see the method to the mad with this, the burden is mostly on the individual but the actual target is the FFL/CFL. (Colorado requires an FFL and a Colorado State Firearms License to sell firearms as a business in Colorado.) The fact that RMGO couldn’t see this from the jump annoys the heck out of me.
Basics:
This law is a double permit scheme. You need a permit to take a class and then, having passed the class, another permit that’s valid for five years. It’s expensive and time consuming to comply with this. Probably on the order of several days and at least $1000 by the time you’re done. It’s also worth noting that, at this point, the class doesn’t exist and no one is exactly sure what that class will look like. Can it actually be set up in a manner that complies with the law by the time this goes into effect on 1 August, 2026? No one actually knows.
This was sold as, and in all honesty sort of is, a crack down on mags. Dems are PO’d that most of the state pays no attention to the mag restrictions from 2013. If a sheriff doesn’t want to enforce the mag ban then it basically doesn’t exist in that county and the FFLs sell whatever mags they want. For most of the state this means the “mag ban” effectively doesn’t exist. For the state, outside of Denver and Boulder, there’s no enforcement for possession either. At this point IIRC, six people have been charged with the mag ban as a “sweetener” or “sentencing enhancer” for other crimes like armed bank robbery or gunfighting the cops.
This bill is a crackdown on the FFL/CFL ability to do things like that (ie, ignore state law) by taking LE out of the equation for the most part. The state now has a mechanism to go after CFLs if they sell the covered firearms to people who don’t have the right permit, regardless of the stance of LE in the jurisdiction the FFL is in.
In a nutshell, at this point, even in the counties declaring themselves “2A sanctuary counties” (which is a heap of them) the whole thing is now regulatory and run out of Denver. Non-compliance gets your CFL revoked and the business is kaput. In theory the state prosecutor out of Denver can also send the State Patrol out to enforce the law against ostensible violators, and probably will if need be.
Of course, if the county is serious about that 2A sanctuary status then the LE in that county could refuse to enforce the lack of a CFL, which would result in criminal charges for the FFL out of Denver which the LE could then refuse to honor at several levels, including refusing to take the person into a jail if they were convicted in absentia. At that point you’re probably talking about LE on LE violence (local/Sheriff vs State Patrol) and you’ve got some sort of civil war situation on your hands.
As such, I don’t expect local/county LE to help but I don’t really expect them to obstruct either, which means that Denver gets its way, ultimately. Knowing this, the FFLs comply.
Other issues:
The law does create some very interesting issues though. This “permit to purchase” is not the only thing the law does, even though that creates numerous logistical issues and open questions, it’s not the full summation of the law.
For one, say you have a bunch of stripped but serialized lowers. Since the lower “is the firearm” can you build a new rifle after the law goes into effect from a stripped lower legally possessed before the law goes into effect?
No, because the law sees that as “manufacture” which is illegal without the permit to purchase or your own FFL/CFL. This raises questions about swapping uppers after the law goes into effect and how they might/might not prove that you did.
What about a fully built lower? Again, that raises the same issue as swapping uppers. That’s probably “manufacturing”, the real question is if they can secure a conviction. In most areas, probably not, but in other areas just the initial charge will do the work.
But, at the same time let’s say that you have multiple driver’s licenses. You can buy/build a new rifle out of state using your other ID and then bring it back legally. This will be somewhat common. At one point I held three different State’s IDs at the same time. In actual point of fact, depending on which states you’re talking about, getting rid of a ID can be more of a PITA than initially acquiring it because some states are freaked out that they might get sued if they accidentally violate your right to vote. IME, Ohio is particularly bad about this. Even after I got rid of their ID it took me a decade to get removed from their voter roles.
Also, people moving here from another state similarly face no restrictions on what they can bring in with them when they move, they would face restrictions on what they could buy once they establish sole residency in CO. Kind of a “equal application of the law” issue in some regards. Dunno if it meets the legal requirements for such a thing but on its face that’s certainly a question.
Now, that creates yet another issue. In theory, someone lacking a permit to purchase could also have acquired a lower prior to the law going into effect. They could leave the state, assemble the new rifle in a free state and come back since Colorado law theoretically doesn’t apply to the place you assembled the rifle. However, the legal eagles believe that would result in prosecution if you didn’t have residency in the state in which you assembled the rifle. In essence, that license in your pocket means that the State’s jurisdiction follows you around to some degree. The lawyers I’ve seen debate this are split on if they can get a conviction but they all agree that this is an issue where they can make it so costly to fight the thing that the old statement applies “You might beat the rap but you won’t beat the ride”.
Further, not getting as much attention, this law also bans bump stocks, FRTs, binary triggers etc and requires them to be destroyed or turned in. As there’s no compensation for this, it’s a blatant violation of the Takings Clause. No one really talks about this but it’s in there.
There’s also the issue of those people who live in a county with an anti-gun sheriff. The law does not require the sheriff to issue the permit to take a class, the Sheriff can deny issuance for any reason they like. People in such counties are SOL on getting the permit to take the class.
Now, you can avoid the class (and therefore Sheriff’s sign-off) by taking Hunter’s Safety, but that is often backlogged a year in CO as it is, and this law will only make that worse. In fact, you’d expect counties with an anti gun sheriff to have even more extensive backlogs requiring a longer wait or travel to another county to take the Hunter’s Safety Class. More time, more cost.
Then there’s the whole issue of the department running this thing, Parks and Wildlife, which doesn’t really have the capacity or funding to do so even after the bill was changed to “provide for that”. That’s a feature, not a bug. It’s meant to be a cluster.
===
As I’ve pointed out before, this is targeting the businesses, not really the individual. The overall package of laws in Colorado is designed to chip away at the profitability of a LGS and put them out of business. This is in line with what the antis have long said “Maybe you have a 2A right to keep and bear but the amendment doesn’t protect your right to buy it from a vendor”.
Which, by the by, is why they went with the CFL in the first place. It gives them regulatory control over FFLs and, at the same time, makes it not worth holding an FFL if you’re a “kitchen table FLL” or a very small business not running serious inventory. Most of the people I knew who’d retired from retail but maintained an FFL to do occasional transfers for online purchases stopped doing that with the advent of the CFL.
Bloomberg’s lawyers came up with this strategy and handed it to the antis in the CO legislature. They’re doing the same thing in several other states currently (notably in AZ). The idea being to target places they think they can get it done or “push the envelope” as a workaround for Bruen and other cases.
They actually thought this out. As I often point out: Just because you see some blue-haired idiot with 47 facial piercings blathering in a video doesn’t make them representative of your adversary. The cannon fodder can be morons while the “officer corps” is intelligent and educated on what they’re doing. This is exactly what we’ve been facing for 100+ years.
They know that if they’re successful the SCOTUS will probably strike this stuff down anyway but that by the time the cases reach SCOTUS, the damage is done as many FFLs are out of business permanently. This is why they’re selecting places where they believe the courts will initially give them room to run at the state and federal level. All they need is time to destroy business cash flow and they achieve their goal even if the law eventually gets shot down. They know this. You know they know this because they openly say it.
The best shot to have this overturned is actually the current legal battle over Illinois’ FOID card. Of course, that comes with the question of how the SCOTUS would enforce that finding against Colorado going forward, which Colorado will almost certainly resist.
Will need to look at the law at some point but does it cover manual action AR’s as well (stupid stuff like Kali key/ no gas tube so has to be racked for each shot)?
No, it covers rifles that are semi-automatic and can accept a detachable magazine as well as “gas operated pistols”, which a specific carveout for *normal* semi auto pistols operated by blowback.
So, AK/AR pistols, the bigger Desert Eagles, H&K P7 and I think a few others that are fairly rare.
Hmm then AR’s that are not set up to be gas operated could be a similar form of malicious compliance that we tend to see unless I am missing a lot (likely).
I tend to recommend that people just ignore the law when the law is unconstitutional, arbitrary and/or capricious, stupid or just annoying.
Conservatives don’t much like that take in most cases, but hey, they’ve only been losing for like 110 years, I’m sure their tactics will pay off… some day.
SCOTUS has hesitated on this issue and antis everywhere have noticed. Maybe Trump can appoint more constitutional justices with some guts, but I have lost what little faith I had in the judicial. Only a national attitude change on gun control will stop this.